Lobby View, New York, NY August 12, 2009, Canon 45mm TS-E f/4.5

I just had a quick week off but before that I spent six days on two architecture projects. The six days helped drive home what a great lens the new 17mm TS-E is and made me all the more eager to get my hands on the new 24mm TS-E II. But beyond that the spaces I photographed were ringing with my new mantra, Live View is my friend.

Live View is Canon’s implementation of the ability to see the image you are about to shoot live as a video feed on the camera’s screen, zoom in up to a 10x magnification, and check or set focus manually. Live View can be seen one of two ways: via the camera’s screen or if you are tethered either via the camera’s screen or via the computer screen.

Lobby View, 100% Crop of First Image Focused via Live View in Camera

When I first got my 1Ds Mark III’s I used Live View via my laptop’s screen as I tested some lenses. I found it cute but I did not see its usefulness. If anything there was a negative to it.  When operating Live View via the computer, I had a tendency to leave it on for minutes at a time which led to the camera’s imaging chip overheating creating stuck pixels in the image. So, I avoided Live View and continued to shoot as I have always done.

Fast forward a year and a half. I am testing the new 17mm TS-E lens and finding it very hard to focus manually. What to do? Out of desperation it crossed my mind to try Live View again. I had no laptop with me so I enabled it in the camera. Man, what a difference. Zooming in and setting focus. It’s all a piece of cake. On assignment in the following days I was able to put the focus exactly where I wanted every time. No more trial and error via the laptop to set focus. How did I work without this?

It’s clear that Live View can be helpful when shooting wider open, with less depth of field, but I wouldn’t discount the value of it when shooting architecture at f/11 or f/16. Depth of field is a tricky beast made trickier in the digital age. In the analog days most photographers tended to rely on the scales manufacturers provided on lens barrels or if shooting 4×5 they could simply pull a Polaroid to check focus. In both cases, images were never examined at 100% on large computer screens as they are today. If anything, the digital age has brought home the critical nature of focus with all lenses including wide angles, the fact that depth of field was always something of a false promise – it never guaranteed sharpness but only a range of acceptable sharpness around your point of focus, and that all lenses must be tested to not just find their sweet spots but to also find where diffraction sets in.

Community Garden, New York, NY August 14, 2009, Canon 17mm TS-E f/16, Focused via Live View in Camera

Another element in this, too, is newer lenses which don’t have set infinity points. Yeah, I’m shooting a building 50 yards away with a 17mm lens at f/16. I should be able to set the lens to infinity and not think twice about focus. Where’s infinity though? The answer is – it depends. With all lenses it depends upon the temperature, with tilt/shift lenses it depends upon if the tilt is being used, and with autofocus lenses having the lens focus beyond infinity can help the lens achieve accurate focus.

Once you get hooked on Live View it’s hard to work any other way especially if you are working locked down on a tripod and photographing stationary subjects. I recommend using it via the camera’s screen. You can still shoot tethered but Live View is easier and quicker when you are at your camera and all the controls are right at hand. This is also best option with Canon’s manual focus only tilt/shift lenses. In that case there is no advantage to enabling it in the computer. You have to be at the camera to move the focus regardless.

On a Canon 1Ds Mark III Live View is enabled in Set-up Menu 2, select Live View function settings. Once done pressing the Set Button on back of the camera puts you in Live View mode. It takes a second or so but once done the view through the lens appears on the camera’s back screen. You can then put the focus area anywhere within the frame via the Multi-Controller Switch and you can zoom in via the Magnify Button. To exit Live View press the Set Button again.

Community Garden, New York, NY, August 14, 2009, Canon 24mm TS-E f/8, Focused via Live View in Camera

The Live View function settings will also allow you to project a grid on top of the image and Custom Function 16, Live View exposure simulation, in the Custom Function IV menu, Operation/others, will alter the Live View screen image to reflect your exposure settings. I find the latter helpful when I use Live View.

I also find it helpful to use a loupe against the camera’s screen when working with Live View. Not to magnify the screen image further but to block out stray light. If you’ve been a photographer a while and have an old Schneider medium-format film loupe with a dark base or Toyo view camera focus loupe they will work fine. Otherwise, Hoodman’s HoodLoupe works very well.

A huge sigh of relief will be heard round the world today from photographers, videographers, and others who rely on Apple’s MacBook Pro on location. This morning Apple re-introduced the antiglare “matte” option on the 15″ MacBook Pro.

Late Sunday afternoon found us shooting across 195 to Asbury Park to see the Pretenders at the Stone Pony. First stop though? Tenth Avenue Burritos in Belmar. 195 practically dumps you at their doorstep and you won’t go wrong, trust me.

Then it was on to the Stone Pony. I had never been there to see a show and I have to admit, on a certain level, it just never occurred to me – which in a way was the theme of the evening. We were seeing the Pretenders, a band that is a part of you if you grew up in the seventies or eighties, and had gotten tickets through friends by chance. But, again, I can’t say that it ever hit me to go out of my way to see them. I’m glad we did.

The concert was phenomenal and is one of those times where you’re glad you had the opportunity to see an icon in action. Chrissie sounds amazing. She oozes rock. She is rock. None of which is to downplay the band because as strong as Chrissie is, the current Pretenders lineup is that good as well.

Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, The Stone Pony

Asbury Park, NJ, August 9, 2009

On the heels of my post late last night, I took the 17 TS-E out for another spin this morning.

The screen grab above gives a sense of the range of shift movement in the new lens. It is impressive, especially for a 17mm wide angle lens and a 35mm-style DSLR lens.

The lens does vignette a bit wide open but as you can see above it’s eliminated once you have stopped down to at least of f/8.

Most lenses on a Canon 1Ds Mark III body will max out their sharpness at about f/10. Stop down more than that and diffraction sets in, softening the overall image. With a shift lens the amount of shift is a factor as well. The lens by design will be sharpest when not shifted (it’s only using the center of the glass,) so it’s always good to test what happens at the extremes.

Above is a screen grab showing the upper right corner of the image with the lens shifted to its maximum, +12mm. It was interesting to find that f/16 looks to be optimal in this scenario. It’s noticeably better than f/8, f/11, and f/22.

One thing I neglected to test fully was the lens performance unshifted.  I know that f/8 looks very good but I suspect that f/11 will better and possibly f/16 as seen in the fully-shifted test.

When given the opportunity, I like to create composites with tilt/shift lenses. It gives a wider field of view with a longer lens, much like the feel of a view camera image. Most of the personal work on my web site was created this way using Canon’s 24mm TS-E and 45mm TS-E lenses.

I suspected that the 17mm TS-E would be too wide for this to be effective but a few tests this morning show it to have potential.

Canon 17mm TS-E, Three Vertical Frames Stitched Together

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Canon 17mm TS-E, Three Vertical Frames Stitched Together

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Canon 17mm TS-E, Three Horizontal Frames Stitched Together

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Maybe I won’t miss that 14mm II lens so much after all?..

I’ve been fortunate to get my hands on one of Canon’s newest wide angle lenses, the 17mm f/4L TS-E (tilt/shift.) A quick look has shown it to be everything that has been reported – sharp edge to edge, virtually no distortion, and little to no chromatic aberration visible.  Wow!

It was only a little while ago that many photographers were bemoaning the the lack of quality in Canon’s wide angle offerings. Canon has responded, first with the 16-35mm f/2.8L II and the 14mm f/2.8L II, and more recently with the 24mm f/1.4L II, the 24mm f/3.5L II TS-E, and the 17mm TS-E.

What the 17 TS-E brings to the mix is versatility especially for the architecture photographer. In many ways, if you ever worked with a view camera it will harken back to that due to its heavy construction, its size (forcing you to work a bit more methodically,) and its front element – a partial hemisphere of glass. It cannot take a lens hood so, just like in the view camera days, you’ll want to have a card with you to flag the front element from a direct hit of the sun.

17 TS-E vs. 14 II vs. 16-35 II @ 16mm

All images at 1/125 @ f/10; shot on a Canon 1Ds Mark III with a tripod and the mirror lock up engaged. Images processed in Aperture v2.1.3 with no additional sharpening and presented here as 100% screen res. crops. The crops below would be 0.66″x1.57″ @ 300 dpi if printed (a tiny portion of the overall image.)

In the center all three are very close though the 17 TS-E has the sharpness by a hair, followed by the 16-35 II, and then the 14 II. On the edges the 17 TS-E again excels but the 14 II easily bests the 16-35 II.

We can see that the 16-35 II is not as good in the corners on sharpness or CA but keep in mind that the 16-35 II is not at its best from 16-19mm. It excels in the 20-35mm range. The 14 II has long been a favorite of mine. In fact, I just sold my copy because I don’t expect to need it with the 17 TS-E on hand but I’m having a bit of seller’s remorse. The 14 II was always one of those lenses that when I was shooting architecture tethered and the image appeared on the laptop jaws would drop. It always looked very very sharp. It can have a bit of CA and distortion but they’re so minimal they will often not need correction in the final image.

My 17 TS-E will be on location working hard the next couple of weeks. I’m excited to work with it. I also have the new 24mm f/3.5 II TS-E on order. It’s supposed to be just as good and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will arrive in time.

A couple more images to juxtapose with the winter details shot earlier this year.