I've been thinking for a while about picking up a tilt-shift lens. I love the idea of using them for easy pano work and obviously like the idea of manipulating the plane of focus.

I shoot Canon. If you were to buy one for landscape work what would it be? The 24mm seems like the obvious choice but I wonder if the 45 would be more practical? I think I'd use the 45 more for my style of shooting though I would probably get more dramatic images with the 24. But, I already have the Zeiss 21mm Distagon. It's not TS of course but the focal length is so close...I don't think I'd use the 17 nearly enough to justify buying it. Just a few random thoughts. Interested in what others think and open to changing my opinion on the 17 and 24.

What to do....what to do....what to do....

Back when I was shooting Canon I had the 24, the 45 and the 90. The 45 got by far the most use. BUT, in the Canon system, if memory serves, the 45 is still the very old lens that doesn't have the ability to tilt and shift in the same direction without a hardware modification that then makes it impossible to tilt and shift in a 90 degree direction to each other. the new Canon 24 and 17 do allow this and are optically superior to the 45 but the 45 was a very good lens especially since you generally shoot it around f/5.6 to f/8.

Thanks EJ!

I had a big debate whether to get the 17 or 24 first. I bought the 17 to use for starscapes as well as landscapes. I like showing the stars as points rather than trails and 17mm at about 25 seconds does the job. Definitely a specialty lens but I have shot some landscapes so far.

The 24 will be my next purchase and will be used for cityscapes and landscapes.

EJ did a poll recently that showed the majority of forum members here would choose a 24 for landscape if limited to only one lens. You may want to refer to that thread. I have no luck using the search function on this site so can't show a link, sorry.

I will consider the 45 and 90 when they are updated as they are quite inferior to the newer 17 and 24.

Here is that poll:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=212989&p=2064304

BTW at 17mm you should be able to go up to 35 sec without star trails forming - definitely 30 seconds. General rule of thumb is 600/FL. If you want to be really conservative go 500/FL to calculate the maximum shutter open time without star trails.

Thanks for posting the link to the poll. I'm aware of the 500 and 600 rule but when I look at my stars at 100% in RAW I can see small trails at the longer shutter speeds. May not show in a print, I will have to check that out.

I guess this thread has inspired me, I just ordered the 5D MKIII and the 24 TS-E in stock at B&H as a bundle. The lens alone is $150. off now until 6/2/12 and buying with a qualifying body gets you another $150. off, so $300. total discount. Not bad for a lens I have been lusting after.

Ah the power of NSN - we should get a kickback from Canon and Nikon

E.J,
I should probably know this, but your 600/FL rule of thumb - with a Canon aps-c sensor, I'd be multiplying my focal length by 1.6, correct?
(Sorry to hijack the thread)

Yes and no. All a 1.6 crop camera does is crop out the center of the image (it does not magnify it) so it really isn't different from that aspect, but you have to blow up a 1.6x cropped frame more (so here you do magnify) to get to the same output size so in that case yes..' but ... for the same field of view you use a smaller focal length on a cropped camera...

So its not as easy as it seems. If you use the 500/fl rule you can probably get away with it for any situation unless you are looking at it on a pixel level view.

Hey, it's my thread! I should get a royalty too!

If it worked that way, Canon, Nikon, RRS, Adobe, Gitzo, etc etc etc all would owe me big time

Touche!