28mm shift

Has anybody tried the Pentax "K" 28mm shift lens on a digital body? They still command pretty high prices.

Before someone says "just fix it in photoshop", I know that is possible but would like to know how the shift performs. I am also contemplating a 5x4 or 5x7 view camera (if anyone has a spare they'd like to sell :wink

Thanks, Kris.

Im pretty sure there are 2 forum members who have one..
One I think is gartmore

The trouble may well be that 28mm on digital is not very wide. I know you don't want me to say it, but Photoshop does indeed offer one possible solution.

The other one is to use the widest lens you can get (the 12-24mm in my case) and keep the camera back absolutely vertical. You will get lots of empty foreground, but the top part of the picture will be rectilinear and the unwanted parts can be cropped off.

Thanks John,

I had thought of getting a 12-24 but wondered about the shift as I can use it on my film cameras as well unlike the zoom. They are expensive for a second-hand lens though, usually going for 250 quid. As I said somewhere else, the 12-24 is the only lens tempting me away from the 16-50 at the moment. One lens at a time!

Thanks for your thoughts.

Best wishes, Kris.

I may be wrong but I think Dan Bridge has one.

I saw one on e-bay recently I think it was a Hartblei 55mm and the BIN price was $1400

The Hartbleis have tilt as well as shift though, which makes them a far more interesting prospect than the Pentax with shift only. Supplies of their own Super-Rotators have been on the thin side lately (even their own web site shows them being out of stock) but you can still get 35mm & 85mm Arsat T&S lenses from them in Pentax mount for just $595 and $385 respectively. The Arsat lenses are a little more crude than the Hartblei ones and use the Canon-type T/S mechanism but they still get the job done if you're in the market for one.

Due to the smaller sensor on DSLRs (compared to 35mm) you'll find that shifting a lens will have much less of an effect on the final picture. Tilting, however, works just as well on DSLRs as it does on their larger format brethren so if you want funky DoF effects then I'd forget the Pentax (unless it's for film) and look to Ukraine instead.

Of course, if it's for artistic interpretations only, then you could save a lot of money and buy a Lensbaby - the new "Composer" they're showing at Photokina looks quite cool.

Thanks for that Hefty. I'm not in the market for one I just stumbled across the Hartblei and was curious about its build. The one I saw was silver and with the hood on, it looked like a bomb.

Hello Kris,

I've got one of those.

In my film days it was just about my favourite lens. I would even carry it on backpacking trips as the only lens on an LX.

I agree with John that 28mm on an APS-C sensor is not that wide and so it has limited use for architecture. I also found that the maximum shift was often not enough with tall buildings, but it is great for landscapes.

It is also fun to shift the lens the 'wrong' way so that the camera has to be tilted even more to get dramatically converging verticals. Interesting to shift sideways too.

This is also not only a manual focus lens but also manual aperture stop down so you will be using the manual options on your K10D.

Largely because of the lack of wideness on an APS-C sensor I've not used it much in digital so have little to show by way of pictures. However I did use it for a panorama this summer and it was great to keep the lens horizontal for ease of stitching but to shift up a bit to cut out some of the foreground.

Here's a link to the panorama I created, unfortunately only 250 pixels high but just under 3000 pixels long (the original TIFF is 41506 x 3543 pixels and is 430MB so I'm not putting that up!)

link to panorama

[Yes I know the sky is blown out at each end but in a 360 degree panorama you have to shoot towards the sun at some point and I decided to leave as it was. Also there are JPEG artifacts due to substantial resize]

It could also be used to do a horizontal panorama of a building; 3 shots - shift left, no shift, shift right) all with the sensor parallel to the building would result in the building not tapering off at each end which would happen if you turned the lens to each side.

I'm surprised that you think £250 is a lot for this lens - paid £250 for mine in 1980 and I understand that when they went off of Pentax's list about 5 years ago they were around £1500. It's probably due to there not being very wide on digital APS-C that is keeping the price down!

If you go for one I think you will enjoy playing with it.

Good luck
Bob

Bob,

thanks for all the extremely useful information. I must admit I am tempted, and after all I can use it on my LX and scan the Fuji Velvia slide and get sweet pictures that way.

The Hartblei's certainly have good write-ups but seem almost impossible to get hold of at the moment.

I guess 250 isn't that expensive compared to some lenses. I was thinking of the price most K/M series lenses from the mid-70s go for but this is very specialised obviously, and I hadn't realised they were made up to 2004!

Again, many thanks for your comments.

Cheers, Kris.

I do ideed, without a doubt the finest lens I own, but as everyone has pointed out about as much use on a digital body as a 50mm Shift would be on a film one! I'd imagine that when shifted the light would be falling on the sensor at an extreme angle and sensors ideally require the light falling at right angles. It has yellow, orange and UV filters built in and a gel filter holder behind the rear element. It has a built in hood of sorts but it is impossible to induce flare. Pre-set diaphragm of course

If you buy on to use on your LX then get a gridded focus screen as well for two reasons, the microprism/split image turns to a big black dot when you shift and the lines will help you straighten the verticals. Tripod use is recommended


I'll dig out some prints using it and post them later

Ken

EDIT: If you've seen one at £250 grab it, there are two on ebay today both around £470 + P&P + tax and duty, they are in HK and USA

Unfortunately not.

Dan

It's a shame, with the current price of the 18-55, that some enterprising person doesn't try and hack it into a tilt-n-shift... (but then it may be much more complex than that I suppose!)
Matt

Tilt/shift needn't be complicated; a set of bellows could be adapted to move up and down / left and right / skewed with a little ingenuity and some cogs / toothed rails. The problem is that the whole mechanism would move the lens further from the camera so you'd lose infinity focus - not a problem if you're doing close up product photography, but not much use if you were looking for a shift lens to cover architecture and landscapes.

have you guys seen the new lensbabie? it's got a hollow ball and socket joint in the center!

Yes! And I really like the look of it too!

Wasn't too keen on the earlier versions as they looked a little fiddly and imprecise, but the new Composer looks like it might force some pennies out of my wallet...

I like the idea of interchangeable optics on the new LB line too, although the "standard" 50mm doublet is probably the only one from the initial line up I'd want. Hopefully there'll be more announced in the near future though.