Photographed this past fall, NYU Dental School’s new Oral and Urgent Care suite struck me in how much it reminded me of the house in North by Northwest.

Vandamm House, North by Northwest

The house in the movie, inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, never existed in real life. The exteriors were painted mattes composited with live action foreground images.

NYU Dental School’s new suites:

Larger versions of the last two images are on my web site in the Architecture>Commercial gallery, here and here.

I have posted reports on both of Canon’s new TS-E lenses (aka tilt/shift), the 17mm f/4L and the 24mm f/3.5L II, and I have been using them full on since receiving them earlier this year. They’re great optics. It’s clear how much of an improvement they are and how much they stand out the first time you use them.

Now, architectural photographer Rainer Viertlböck has posted two tests comparing them with his medium-format digital back, a 33mp Sinar e75, coupled with Rodenstock’s high-end view camera lenses; the 23HR, 28HR, and 35HR. Rainer used the Canon lenses on a Canon 5D Mark II.

Canon 17mm TS-E F/4L compared to Rodenstock 23HR + Sinar e75

Canon 24mm TS-E f/3.5L II compared to Rodenstock 28HR & 35HR + Sinar e75

Many are in agreement about how great these new Canon lenses are but I don’t know that anyone, myself included, expected them to compare so favorably against a medium-format digital back when used with view camera lenses. In the 17mm TS-E test, the Canon doesn’t have quite the detail or resolution of the medium-format kit but it comes awful close. This holds true even when the Canon files are res’d. up to match the Sinar e75 resolution.

In the 24mm TS-E II test, the Canon does a much better job than the Sinar/Rodenstock combo in controlling flare from tungsten light sources.

Every digital kit is a compromise of sorts. With a DSLR you have flexibility but loose in sharpness; with a medium-format digital back you gain in sharpness and resolution, but are more limited in workflow, operability, and the cost of entry is orders of magnitude higher.

It used to be that one of the main factors in digital architectural photography tipping the scales toward medium-format digital backs was the ability to use view camera lenses. This combo offered a photographer image quality which a DSLR with SLR style lenses could never attain. Well, never is broken and that compromise is looking less like a compromise and more like a choice based on style and needs.

–

My Canon 17mm TS-E and 24mm TS-E II posts:

• Quick Look – Canon 17mm f/4L TS-E Lens
• Longer Look – Canon 17mm f/4L TS-E Lens
• Live View is My Friend (features the Canon 17mm TS-E lens)
• Canon’s TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II Lens
• What’s It Take to Fill a Space and Make It Your Own? (features the Canon 17mm TS-E lens)

Ace assistant, Dan Mezick, gets a Macbeth card into the frame.

On location on Tuesday. I’ve used this method a few times when a subject is high up but still within reach of a light stand. Time to hoist the Macbeth card. The camera is in the foreground, on its back, and pointed straight up to photograph the ceiling details.

More info. and final photos once the images are published.

Butler College, Princeton University, God courtesy of Michelangelo

The clouds above were present when the image was shot so it’s hard not to make the leap above. This is a new project added with the new web site, Butler College at Princeton University, designed by Henry Cobb of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.

Shot in August, Butler College incorporates many sustainability features including green roofs on more than half of the buildings. These will serve as a living experiment for professors and students as they assess its impact when compared with traditional roofing materials.

Here are more images from the project. Larger versions can be found at the new web site in the Butler College Gallery (minus Michelangelo’s input.)

Back in New York City a week ago, Friday, to fill out some work from earlier this summer. This time it’s a chance to see before and after in NYU’s Founders Hall.

Empty dorm room, August 14, 2009

November 6, 2009, View 1

November 6, 2009, View 2

Word came earlier this week that CIT Group, a 101 year-old bank to small and medium-sized businesses, was filing for bankruptcy.

I photographed their building in 2006 for the building’s developer.  Hopefully, the creditors won’t drain all the color out of the lobby.

505 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY, October, 2006.

Too see these images larger visit the new commercial architecture gallery at jonroemer.com.

This is the view from New York University’s newest dorm, Founders Hall. The only catch? You have to enroll and then get very lucky in the housing lottery.

A few images already appeared in the Live View blog post. Here are another few and the rest can be viewed in the Recent Work Gallery on my web site.

This past week I was finally able to get my hands on the new Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II lens. This lens is an update to Canon’s Mark I version which dates back to 1991. The earlier version, while never the sharpest lens in the bag, held up surprisingly well over the years. Where other lenses had to be shelved because the increased resolution of succeeding generations of dslr models rendered them problematic, the Mark I version of the TS-E 24mm with some extra Photoshop steps was still viable and a good counterbalance to shooting with fixed lenses and doing all of the perspective correction in Photoshop.

Canon TS-E 24mm II @ f/11

Compare the TS-E 24 II to the TS-E 24 in the upper right of the image above.

Compare the TS-E 24 II to the TS-E 24 in the lower left of the image above.

What does the new Canon TS-E 24 II bring to the table? It’s sharper, it’s optically true, and it exhibits no chromatic aberration. Using it will save a minimum of two steps in Photoshop post-production – it needs no correction for lens distortion nor does it need chromatic aberration correction. Eliminating those steps will save time and they’ll also save image quality as both steps tended to soften the image further.

Like the new TS-E 17mm, the TS-E 24mm II offers 12mm of shift. This is another improvement over the Mark I version of the lens which offered 11mm of shift but suffered image degradation if you shifted more than 7mm.

Canon TS-E 24mm II, 0mm Shift

Canon TS-E 24mm II, +12mm Shift

Most lenses on a 21mp’ish camera max out sharpness at f/11. Stop down more and diffraction sets in softening the image further. But when I tested the TS-E 17mm lens I found that if you wanted to hold sharpness on the outer edges when the lens is shifted you really needed to shoot at f/16. This was at the expense of softening some detail in the center of the frame but it was questionable how noticeable that would be. The TS-E 24mm II is similar but not as extreme.

Compare the TS-E 24mm II with a +12mm rise at f/11 and f/16 (image is the upper left corner of the photo above.) You can see that f/16 is holding the corner a bit better but this is a very small area of the frame, the difference is not huge, and some print tests are needed to confirm if f/16 over f/11 is warranted in this situation.

As mentioned above, the TS-E 24 II appears to be optically true, amazingly so, and in that sense similar to a good view camera lens. Here is a composite image made from three horizontal frames on the TS-E 24 II utilizing the full range of possible shifts (-12mm, 0mm, +12mm.)

Canon TS-E 24mm II: -12mm, 0, +12mm Combined

Click here for larger version

An overcast day is not necessarily the best day to test a lens. Details can look soft and mushy and you can’t push the lens when it comes to checking for chromatic aberration or flare but it’s clear from the images what an improvement the new lens is.

Canon TS-E 24mm II

Click here for larger version

All of the images above: Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University.

Canon TS-E 24mm II, Roberts Stadium, Princeton University

Click here for larger version

Canon TS-E 24mm II, Roberts Stadium, Princeton University

Click here for larger version

For more information:

The Digital Picture

DPReview

Canon

Northlight Images