Medium format lenses

[Hansm]

Hi Kit,

I don't want to frighten or disappoint you but AFAIK this is a 35 mm lens. Depending on your digital body it can be useable or not. If your body has a APS-C Sensor this lens can also be used for tilt/shift.
If the body however is 35 mm AKA full frame the lens circle just covers the 35 mm area and you will not have to much playground with shift.

Normally when talking about medium format lenses these are designed for 4.5x6 cm till 6x9 cm format film size and have a bigger image circle that gives you more play in tilt/shift.

[JonathanC]

Ooops. Should have looked at the link earlier. The PK mount isn't a medium format at all. Its a Pentax K mount for a 35mm SLR.

[Klickit]

Hi Kit,

I don't want to frighten or disappoint you but AFAIK this is a 35 mm lens. Depending on your digital body it can be useable or not. If your body has a APS-C Sensor this lens can also be used for tilt/shift.
If the body however is 35 mm AKA full frame the lens circle just covers the 35 mm area and you will not have to much playground with shift.

Normally when talking about medium format lenses these are designed for 4.5x6 cm till 6x9 cm format film size and have a bigger image circle that gives you more play in tilt/shift.

Hi Hans. My camera is D80 which has the APS-C sensor. It possibly won't be the ideal lens for the project, as the lenses used are generally around the 50mm range, but it was the only one in lots of searching that fitted both my budget and gemeral requirements. Once I started looking at true medium format lenses on places such as Keh.com, I realised that they would be way too expensive to use as an experiment.

[Hansm]

Hi Kit,

Good news you have a APS-C sensor. This lens will be suitable because it has a circle for 35 mm sensors and it will give you enough room for tilt/shift.
I have seen some pics with this lens and the bokeh looks very nice.
Good luck with the project.
When ready can you post some pictures?

[Klickit]

I certainly will, Hans.

The lens arrived yesterday, along with an email from the seller, apologising for a fault that he hadn't detected until it was sold. The aperture ring works nice and smoothly, but it is broken and set wide open. He was very apologetic and has refunded almost all the money, so I at least have a test lens to see if the idea will work in principle. An initial snap taken basically with the lens hand held up close to the camera shows some possibility, but it may only be good for very close subjects. It is a start, anyway.

[JonathanC]

Could it be a bit stuck? The PK lenses have a lever on the back so that the lens stays wide open until you hit the shutter.
A good tap might free it off.

[Klickit]

It's past stuck - I can actually see the end of a wee spring that has come loose. It flops in and out of view, depending on which way I tilt the lens and the wee aperture lever just sits where you put it, instead of snapping back into place. If I get brave, I might even borrow the engineer's tiny screwdriver set and dis-assemble it. It ended up costing me $15.50NZ ($10.50US)(8.38Euro)(7.27UK) so can almost be regarded as expendable.

[Klickit]

Update: The lens I bought sort of works, in a Pooh Bear kind of way, but wasn't really going to do the job I wanted. I found that the medium format lenses were too expensive to buy for purely experimental purposes and was all ready to give up on this front, but then I found a second hand G3 Lensbaby on TradeMe. It came complete with a separate wide angle lens and 2 macro extensions for way less than the price of a new Lensbaby, let alone one with all the additions. I'm just starting to experiment with it and it's a tricky wee beast to use. Doesn't connect electronically with the camera, which I didn't realise, so manual focus, my pet hate, is the deal. But it's probably time I had a new challenge, anyway.

[Wirefox]

but I was particularly taken with this shot.

If you have a 50mm lens (or any kens for that matter) kicking around reverse it and push the front end of the lens against the body flange so that no light gets in. You get an incredibly thin DoF. It is best if you use the lens wide open or pretty near.

These shots were taken with a 50mm Zuiko f/1.8 and you can pick them up for next to nothing. If you want to get really snazzy you can buy a reversing ring to suit you camera system. I did not take as much care as I should have with these but you get the gist.

[Klickit]

If you have a 50mm lens (or any kens for that matter) kicking around reverse it and push the front end of the lens against the body flange so that no light gets in. You get an incredibly thin DoF. It is best if you use the lens wide open or pretty near.

These shots were taken with a 50mm Zuiko f/1.8 and you can pick them up for next to nothing. If you want to get really snazzy you can buy a reversing ring to suit you camera system. I did not take as much care as I should have with these but you get the gist.

This one I especially like. I have heard about the reversed lens technique and will try it once we are a bit more time-rich. Thanks, Steve.

[Inkanyezi]

Basically, all reflex cameras are built upon the earlier concepts of miniature reflexes, with about the same flange distance. Nikon cameras share the bayonet mount of older models dating back to the late fifties. Therefore, any lens for a 35mm reflex cannot be adapted into a tilt-shift assembly and still focus to large distances. It would only focus very close when the extra hardware is put twixt camera and lens.

However, lensbabies come in two different flavours. There is a Lensbaby Composer, which although it will not shift, tilts. Unlike the Lensbaby Muse, which needs support to stay in place, it remains where you set it, so it may be used for controlling the focus plane. The lens is a glass lens of better quality than the other Lensbaby, the focal length is 50 mm and it focuses to infinity.

A medium format lens would be rather cumbersome and difficult to convert into tilt-shift, and moreover it is likely to have a rather long focal length, where the advantage of shifting would not be very evident, but where tilting could be used to enhance depth of field, just as in a view camera.

There is a Russian lens that is not always available, but which tilts and shifts any direction, the Hartblei Super Rotator 35 mm. Not really cheap, but not as expensive as Nikon lenses that only shift. A drawback is the protruding flash on the camera body that interferes with movements, but some of the problems may be solved by mounting the camera in odd positions, as upside down, to enable some movements.