Hartblei/Zeiss 40mm, 80mm, 120mm Tilt/shift lenses
Looking for an incredible set of tilt/shift lenses for Nikon or Canon? Check out the Hartblei/Zeiss 40mm, 80mm, and 120mm tilt/shift offerings, available individually or as a set. But take a deep breath before looking at the price. Quality costs money of course. Hartblei tells us there will be a US dollar price, but it is unspecified as yet. Also see the 40/80/120 PDF information sheet.
Tilt lenses afford an opportunity to evade the ever-present problem of diffraction, by allowing the plane of focus to vary (tilt), instead of being parallel to the sensor. This means that an image could be made (for example) at f/4 with sharper front-to-back results than at f/16 with a lens that cannot tilt! View cameras have enjoyed such capabilities since the beginning of photography, but it’s sadly (mostly) lacking in DSLRs. See also my comments on technical excellence in Is 12 Megapixels Enough?.
It would be particularly interesting to test how these lenses compare to the new Nikon 24/45/85 tilt/shift offerings. But at US$12K or so for the Hartblei/Zeiss set (and US$5400 for the Nikon offerings), that seems challenging.
Lens tilted to change the plane of sharp focus
The 80mm, 120mm, 40mm tilt/shift offerings
An elegant solution, the improved non-prototype production lenses this fall will enjoy improved ergonomics (new lens barrel) along with the ability to mount the lens in the ballhead clamp (instead of the camera)—a big deal, since all that weight can place a big strain on the lens mount; these are heavy medium format lenses.
Functional and elegant mounting
