Canon TS-E 17mm f/4L Ultra Wide Angle Tilt Shift Lens

by Geoff 09 Sep 0 Comments

Canon TS-E 17mm 4L Lens

Tilt and shift lenses have a very useful purpose to correct any perspective distortion in an image by being able to tilt and shift the lens horizontally and vertically in relation to the plane of the film or sensor.

The Canon TS-E17 f/4L, Ultra wide angle tilt shift lens does exactly the above with a 17mm focal length lens, the extreme wide angle lens is very suited for architectural and landscape photographers. It will enable you to capture stunning images with super low distortion.

Tilt and Shift movements have been available on view cameras for many years and can be very useful in the smaller Digital SLR cameras.

A normal camera lens will provide sharp focus in only one plane parallel to the sensor and perpendicular to the lens axis, however when the plane of the lens can be tilted, then this plane of focus can be changed to be at various angles and photographers can adjust this plane of focus to obtain creative effects.

This functionality can be very useful in both landscape and architectural photography to get both the foreground and background in focus rather than just relying on the depth of field effect. Some photographers have also used these tilt effects in portrait photography.

The shift adjustment is a displacement of the lens parallel to the image plane, so that the position of the subject in the image area can be adjusted without moving the camera back.

Shifting of the lens can allow different portions of the image circle to be cast onto the image plane, this functionality can also be very useful to use when taking multiple exposure panoramas and stitching the images where the lens has been shifted rather than shifting the whole camera and lens assembly in normal panorama shooting.

It should be noted that a tilt/shift lens will have a larger image circle than a standard lens of the same focal length.

Canon have a nice selection of different focal length tilt and shift lenses as followrs depending on you focal length needs:

TS-E17mm f/4L Ultra Wide Angle Tilt Shift Lens - An ultra wide angle tilt and shift lens.
TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II Wide Angle Tilt Shift Lens - Wide angle tilt and shift lens.
TS-E 45mm f.2.8 Tilt and Shift Lens – Tilt and shift lens suitable for landscape and architecture photography.
TS-E 90mm f/2.8 Telephoto Tilt and Shift Lens - A telephoto tilt and shift lens for product typoe photography.

There are many images on Flickr using this TS-E17 f/4L Ultra Wide Angle Tilt Shift Lens.