Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/06/17

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Subject: [Leica] RE: MLU and Canon.... Tilt shift....
From: DABirkey@aol.com
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 23:54:28 EDT

First off, the only camera I use a mirror lock up feature on is a F-3 used 
for 1 second exposures on a Durst ChromaPro.  Not using the MLU renders the 
slide dupes unusable. 

Canon F1 fn's do not have a mirror lock up feature..... you can stop down the 
lens to at least remove the diafram movement which does seem to help.  Quite 
frankly I rarely shoot anything that would benefit from it..... most of the 
close-up work I do uses flash as does anything in the studio....   Would it 
be nice to have?  yes.... but neccesity for my work? ... not hardly.

Last, to the best of my knowledge, the Canon FD 35mm TS was the first 35mm 
lens to incorporate both tilts and shifts.  I had one of these lenses and I 
loved it as you could really get everything nice and square... I sold it 
because it really wasn't wide enough for what I wanted to use it for and I 
learned how to square things in the darkroom by tilting the easel.   

Anytime you point your camera up, down or sideways you will get some 
convergence or divergence of lines.  A shift lens allows you to get those 
lines square again... the tilting is nice for certain situations where you 
want to "increase"  or "decrease" depth of field .....   of course it can be 
used badly and and you may find that every flower in the meadow is sharp to 
infinity but the tops of the nearest tree is way out of focus.  or you can 
photograph a building and have the middle sharp and the top and bottom out of 
focus or both sides.....

Basically you end up converting your 35mm camera into a mini view camera.  
read a book about large format movements for more info....  George Lepp once 
stated in Outdoor Photographer (don't quote me though) that the Canon TS 90 
was his favorite lens for macro work....   

Duane

http://members.tripod.com/~Duane_Birkey/index.html