I'm thinking about getting the above lens. While landscape is my main purpose I would also like to do a little architectural and other shooting. My question is if the movements are adjusted to be both parallel, does that imply that if their combined effect is to work in landcape orientation that it necessarily doesn't work in portrait? IOW is there some detailed description that would explain how I might be disadvantaged by making that adjustment? I just like the benefits of depth of field for landscape work but I'm not sure how pratical it is to use this lens once its setup in a particular way.
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I rented the 24 and used it for several weeks and ended up buying the 45 which is a more useful lens for me. I have left mine in default--tilt perpendicular to shift. As the one poster noted, for architectural shooting, it seems more useful. For landscape, there are times that having them parallel might have been more useful, but I still have not changed them--as I don't want to do it in the field and I use it more in default than I think I would changing the orientation. Because, as the other posters stated, you can rotate the lens, you can use either orientation in either way.
Here is a good site for explaining just how to change orientation written by Jack Flesher. Scroll down to the bottom for the reorientation info.
[a href=\"http://www.outbackphoto.com/workflow/wf_42/essay.html]http://www.outbackphoto.com/workflow/wf_42/essay.html[/url]
For a discussion about whether to shoot with it default as opposed to reorientation to parallel see here
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp...essage=16961386On the point of not being as sharp corner to corner--if you are using tilt, its important to understand that there is a cone of focus that increases with stopping down. Therefore, you won't find it possible to get corner to corner sharpness IMO (or perhaps I should say that there will be an area of 'blurred' -which you can control by normal technique). Depending upon where you focus and how far you tilt, this will change. Ordinarily I focus manually to the point I want in focus and then tilt until the nearest I want in focus occurs---and patiently adjust until they both suit as well as I can get them. Doing this horizontally, its referred to as swing--and one that I shot demonstrates this fairly well. I wanted the furthest sunflower on the right in focus, so I focused first on that, and I wanted the large sunflower in the left fore ground in focus so I swung until it was in focus. So--all the sunflowers in the first row, including the leaves, mulch below them, etc. are in focus--the row behind the first row and beyond are blurring. I also had shifted down to get the stalks straight. You can see that cone of focus pretty clearly in this shot. It was handheld by necessity.
http://www.pbase.com/picnic/image/64380926 Using shift only (which I rarely do), the lens is quite good on my 5D.
This is probably my favorite lens--at least creatively. Using it for flat stitch panos, the tilt is nice to increase the perception of DOF--and the images are easy to stitch--even handheld. This makes it quite useful this way for landscape shooting, but here's one person's reason to reorient the lens for landscape use (though, IMO, this would occur less than wanting to do panos--and the vertically shifted panos are closer to 6/7 or 4/3 format).
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp...essage=16981755Diane