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Photography Fail - Problems I had with the Canon TS-E 17mm Lens
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- Опубліковано 1 гру 2018
- In this video I talk about the problems I had when using the Canon TS-E 17mm lens in Hong Kong. This lens has some severe problems with sharpness if not used correctly. And I think I used it correctly, because the only thing I did was shift the lens. I did not tilt it. Hence the effects I observed should not have happened with a proper lens. It was either not calibrated correctly, maybe got a hit sometime, or it is a general problem with the lens.
I also show you how I created the Vertorama of the Hong Kong Junction photo, which I took using the TS-E lens.
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I use this lens all the time. It produces very sharp images all the time. But, I stop down to f14-18 when I shift. If you are doing this wide open at f4 then, of course, you are going to get poor sharpness in the far reaches. Your images show f9. This too is not adequate for sharp corners when shifted. This is also true of the 45mm, the 35mm, and the 24mm tilt shift lenses I use. It was also true of the 4x5 lenses when I was shooting 4x5 film. Nobody ever expected camera movements to work properly with a view camera at 21/2 stops down from the lens's widest aperture. When you shift the lens physically moves away from the sensor/film so the focus changes. Maybe that's not theoretically what's supposed to happen but as a practical matter you have to think about f16-20 as the aperture you need. I also focus in live view with a lupe just like my 4x5. This is better than the view finder. (Canon 5Ds, 51 million pixels.)
This lens works fine in this case if You also TILT the lens downward 1 degree.
Thanks so much for this video. I recently switched from a Canon full frame to a Fujifilm medium format + adapter for EF lenses, and found myself having to focus stack on the 17 T-SE more often. It's nice to know this is a common phenomenon inherent to the lens when shifting to the edges and not one I necessarily have to attribute to my lens specifically or the interaction with the adapter/equipment I'm using. Appreciate you sharing your stacking technique as well
great video and something to be aware of, I love my tilt shift lens for landscape photography, and generally tilt fractionally to get sharpness from front to back.
The 24mm TSE also looses some sharpness when shifted, but is acceptable. Your refocusing tip though can really help get some sharpness back since the top of the building is further away. Still, shooting the 24 without any shifting results in very sharp images.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding but this doesn't sound like the lens is soft, but merely that one part of the image is out of focus. When you re-focus to the top of the building then you get acceptable sharpness, and that would be impossible if the lens was naturally soft at the edges. I don't know what aperture you shot at but I'm guessing that you didn't have enough depth of field to cover.
You are misunderstanding ;-) It was a problem with the lens. The focus plane was the building and I was shooting at f/11 if I remember correctly. At that f-stop, everything in the frame should have been sharp, which it was, if I did not shift more than 5mm. But going beyond - which this lens is designed for - it was no longer the case.
Have you ever used a de-centered lens? The effect is similar and you can mitigate it by doing a focus stack where you take an extra shot focused to the soft part. It's a workaround which should not be necessary with a lens that costs 1700$.
I also talked to quite a few people that own this lens and it seems to be quite fragile. Some said that with time this problem shows up. Others had no problems.. So I guess you have to be lucky if you pick up this lens ;-)
With a rental lens you have to be careful that the thing hasn't been used as a football, so that's the first thing. Then there's the softness. The fact that the lens can be refocused to provide sharpness on the edges means - almost by definition - that it's inherently not soft. The lens is sharp in the middle and then sharp on the edges and that doesn't sound like a soft lens. Broken perhaps, but not soft.
@@davidgrandy4681 It's soft at the edges when shifted - that's what I'm saying - otherwise it was sharp. If you have the lens and it works for you that's fine. It just didn't for me. Btw. I got it from Canon Hongkong. So not just from some rental shop. I assumed they check the equipment ;-)
So that lens was never sharp on the edges when shifted? By the way two years a friend borrowed a 400mm f2.8L Mark II from Canon Canada, we brought it to a soccer game and then discovered that it came broken as it wouldn't focus in AF or manually. A lens that gets community use is just unlikely to be being pristine. About a month ago I got a used Canon 24mm T/S L lens, the original one, and I'm not sure if I've used shift yet concentrating more on tilt and swing, so I better test shift soon. My lens is like a tank, so build quality seems excellent, and I assume that the 17mm T/S should be similar. More to the point the 17 has been around for a while now, and if this shift softness was occurring in all 17mm t/s lenses then Canon would have heard the outrage. If it only occurs in a few, then once again I think that those lenses were broken.
@@davidgrandy4681 I heard one owner say it degrades with time if not handled with care. So this fits with what you say about rental gear. But I heard a lot people painting out Problem with soft corners when shifted, so this is not good for a prime lens in my opinion. But I also had a few tell me theirs is fine. Finally, nearly everyone told me the 24 is better.
Well done Michael! Lots of work but the end result is great. You should check out the FLM ball head which you can use to lock the vertical axis. Then use it in combination with your tilt-shift lens to avoid shifting at the extreme. I use the Canon 24 TSE lens this way at times if the building is too tall.
Interesting suggestion. I'll have a look at that head.
I have these problem too with my 17mm ts-e, but never with my 24mm ts-e, so it's obvious that the 24mm ts-e is much better in the corners and is also better with shifting it to the max. In general the 24mm ts-e a better lens when it comes to sharpness, even without using the ts-e function. I never shift max with the 17mm ts-e, normally that's also not really needed. When I can I shoot pano's with the 17mm ts-e and crop later out the corners that I don't use...when it's possible of course. The rest is exactly what you do....stacking! The option using a 11mm or 12mm lens is a no go for me. I used the Canon 11-24mm at 11mm...it's also a pain to shoot at 11mm and keeping the lines straight. Corner sharpness and CA is also there with the 11-24mm when shooting at 11mm.
Thanks a lot for your feedback. Especially your thoughts on the 11-24 were very interesting to hear. With such extreme angles there's always a tradeoff I guess, no matter which lens and workflow is used. I also heard a lot that the 24 TS-E is the best lens, but I didn't know that the TS-E 17mm had such huge problems compared to it. Good I could retake my photo in Hong Kong the next day, else it would have been a real bummer :-)
I first bough the 24, which was more easy to use than I thought of. As you know, 24mm is when it comes to architecture often not wide enough, so a few years later I bought the 17 and that was a much steeper learning curve. Everything must set up in a 100% perfect way, or else it simply doesn't work. But after all, i'v very happy with this leans and it really can make a difference in your portfolio. I'm leaning more and more to sell all my other lenses like the 24-70 and the 70-200 and buying also the new 50mm and 90mm ts-e. Even for landscape work with max dof with the tilt function is way more superior than all that stacking which I do now when I'm beyond 24mm. About the 11-24, a very heavy beast and another 3000 euro :-( But I'm glad you got your shot in Hong Kong ;-)
I have some 17mm shots on my IG page....
I used to own a TS-E 17mm, I experienced the same issue. I used it with a Sony A9 with a very high quality Metabones adapter. Everything worked great except the corners when shifted too far away. Now, I am buying an EOS R, and was thinking again to buy back my TS-E 17mm. But, now after watching your video, I might not buy that lens again; instead I am buying the 16-35/f2.8 III. Thank you for your discussion.
Now I have an EOS R and a 16-35mm/f4L, which is a great lens, but I've just found that even with the corner sharpness issues of the TS-E 17mm, regular lenses cannot replace the versatility of a 17mm tilt-shift lens.
This lens works fine in this case if You also TILT the lens downward 1 degree.
Amateur photographer: Shoot one photo... go home.
Normal Photographer: Shoot two or three, and check sharpness
Advanced Photographer: Shoot two or three, check sharpness, and shoot a few more from different angles.
Professional Photographer: Shoot two of three, check sharpness, shoot from different angles, some focus stacking and post processing.
....
....
Michael Breitung: Shoot 12 photos, check sharpness and decide to shoot another 12 and 6 more for focus stacking, 5 more for blending, 4 for HDR, 3 more to avoid flare, 3 more to balance color and 2 last ones for the sky...
Definitly Michael, you are on ANOTHER FUCKING LEVEL. I follow tons of photographers (and as same as with you, I buyed his tutorials), and with good names in hers backs.. and the didn't take care of the things you take care when taking a photo.
Sorry for my English.
You are too kind . But I should have better checked the sharpness on location the first evening for all frames, not just the lower two. I was too confident with the lens - learned my lesson ;-)
I bought a used Canon 17mm TS lens for architectural photography and after my first shoot while editing the images I noticed that the image was blurred in the upper right corner. The sharpness was totally gone. I used Topaz Sharpen AI's stabilize tool which completely removed the blurriness. Next time I will use the lens's tilt function as well for focus stacking. Topaz AI was life saver this time !!
Great you could save it! It caught me totally by surprise when I used it a few years ago. I was lucky to have another day and could reshoot ;-)
Great skill and dedication Michael - well done. Regards, JA
Great video on your work; thanks for putting it together!
Wondering if you had the camera body (ie, at tripod head) aimed slightly upward, rather than a perfect horizontal leveling? The nearer office buildings on the left and right are leaning inward at they rise, implying the camera body was aimed slightly upward (ie, I don't mean the tilt function of the lens element.) If so, then your focal plane being parallel with your sensor, would have tilted out of being perpendicular to the ground -- which could perhaps leave the top of the central tower just out of the plane of sharp focus...?
I use this lens mostly on interiors, where nothing is ever as far away as the top of your tower, even if I'm shooting inside a vast cathedral -- so perhaps I haven't encountered a scene yet that will reveal this focus loss... I haven't noticed a dramatic off-focus when shifting in my photos. I use a 2-way level to get the camera body set-up for pure horizontal/level positioning, before attempting my lens-shifting for a pano-stitch series... just wondering if that might have contributed to out-of-focus here?
Hi Christopher, you observed correctly, I was not 100% parallel to the building, the camera was slightly turned upwards. But this should be no problem. The DOF should still contain the top of the building. With normal Wide Angle lenses this is never an issue. Also, I did a test the next day where I made sure to have the lens parallel to some buildings and had the same problem. My suspicion is that the lens had an issue and by shifting too much, the focal plane got further tilted. This should normally not happen. I heard from others who have this lens, that it is a bit fragile and with time this behavior might occur. Happy you're lens doesn't show this problem!
Architecture and interiors demand a circular polarizer filter. Loved the 17mm but unfortunately i needed to use the 24mm shift 90% of the time. Also shifting the 24mm horizontal taking only 2 frames gives you effective FOV of 14.4mm and if you take 3 frames vertically your FOV would be 18mm. So 24mm all day long,also a good video lens
Great video and a beautiful shot Michael! I am not into cityscapes at all usually but this one really caught my attention. Not sure if I'd have the nerve to invest that much time and post processing though 😁
Thanks fort this - I was just about to buy this lens but I've re-thought it now....
Have you tried a tilt shift adapter. I recently bought one for canon Mirrorless (they make them for E-Mount and Nikon Z Mount as well). Basically you can use any EF Mount lens and make it into a tilt shift on your canon Mirrorless. It’s not perfect but for about $200usd, it’s definitely worth having in your kit. The results is similar to your 17mm TS-e but with the adapter and a lens like 16-35 F4 you have a lot more options. *similar to the TS-E, the adapters have trouble at extreme shifting as well and suffers from slight vignetting a maximum shift positions. But I still consider for the price a worthwhile gadget to have.
Thanks for the reply. I haven't tried it yet and since I now switched to the RF lenses I don't think it's an option anymore. But considering the price point and the drawbacks even of the very expensive TS-E lenses, I think it would be a valid option to explore for many photographers.
cheers
What a misunderstending ! it's not about lens quality but it's about deep of field ... if it was a probleme of quality, when you shift, you couldn't focus to the top of the building ! But you can focus on the top it mean that it was just to far away from your focusing point ! The building is just so tall that the top is out of focus, you demonstrate it, the first plan what blury with the focus on the top it's just DoF... you forget that point in your conclusion thinking that it was a bad lens !
the funiest part of your video ? you could tilt a little to correct this and easily make everything sharp !
Regard
You might want to read up on focus Planes. The building was roughly in the focal plane. I even had Elements sharp in the bottom of the frame that were farther away. So here it's not about dof. It's about some other optical quality of the lens. It basically behaved like a decentered lens and by talking with several people who used that lens I learned that it is nearly inevitable with time with that lens because it's fragile. My normal 16 mm lens has no Problem getting all that building sharp when I Point it upwards. Only Problem there the immense keystoning.
@@mibreit-photo This is clearly a DOF issue. Shifting chances the focus plane, and it obviously wasn't aligned with the building.
www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/tilt-shift-lenses2.htm#:~:text=Tilt%20movements%20enable%20the%20photographer,increases%20farther%20from%20the%20camera.
@@propertylensnz I did not tilt the lens, which is what changes the focal plane. I shifted, which should keep the image plane and the focal place in alignment to my understanding - that's the whole point of using such a lens. Once shifted there was no way to get both fg and background in focus in a single shot anymore. This was totally possible if not shifted. So I think there's some truth in what you say, somehow the lens behaved as if tilted after I shifted. But that's a problem with the lens. Both movements should be separate from each other. There are separate controls for it anyways.
@@mibreit-photo The top of the building is further away from you than the base of it, so likely your focus point was closer than hyperfocal meaning that objects at infinity would not be in focus. That's why you can solve your out-of-focus problem by moving the focus point further away. It's not a feature of lens sharpness it's a about DOF and focus point.
@@propertylensnz My focus was on the middle of the building - far enough away. Please check again what focus plane means -> the top of the building is in the same focus plane as the middle of it if the image plane is parallel to the building, which for the vertical shot here was the case. One problem is that forcus planes are usually not really planes on wide angle lenses - they ar often a bit concave or convex, which is why the corners of an image can be out of focus, or here the top of the building. But not to the extent you see here and also not at f/9,5. With a normal lens I get everything in the frame sharp without problems.
Fantástico video y tutorial del procesado. Saludos desde Canarias.
How much sharpness would you lose if you shot a standard 12mm - 14mm lens and straightened the image in Lightroom, compared to the TS-E 17mm? If such an image was indeed cleaner, could you do a pano using a series of equally-straightened images? Thanks.
That's hard to say. With a 12mm lens I would have gotten all in with one frame I think. So I would have rather shot nearly straight like I did for the Vertorama. So in the end I would not have had to correct much perspective, but instead I would have cropped in quite a bit from the bottom to get to a 5x4 frame. With the 5dsr I would have ended up with somewhere between 36 and 40mpix I think.
14mm wouldn't have been enough I think, but it's hard to tell without trying. But shooting multiple frames to create a vertorama using a 14mm lens is quite hard in cities like this. It's hard to put things together. You cannt use the rectilinear stitching but rather do a sperical pano and with that it's hard to get all lines straight in the end.
I use my 17mm TS-E and 24mm TS-E also for video.
Thank you.
Hello! I have same problem, unshifter - right part of image is blurry. How do you fix that problem?
Does this happen when you shift to the right? If so, when you shift left, is the left part of the image blurry?
@@mibreit-photo this happen when lens is in 0 position .no shift and no tilt applied. I mean sharpness is not flat. left side and center is sharp, right side is blurry. is there any kind of adjustment or calibration?
@@gerromy222 If you have this problem even without any shift and tilt, then this is an indication for a decentered lens. Maybe it got a bump or it was like this from the beginning, but there is not much you can do other than trying to work around it by tilting the lens slightly and try to compensate it that way. Otherwise Canon Support hat to help. This can be fixed and maybe you are still under warranty, then you shouldn't have to pay for it.
@@mibreit-photo no warranty bu I will try fix it with Canon support service. Thank you !
You should try the Laowa 12mm f2.8 with the Magic Shift Converter which is like a 1.4x teleconverter (for 17mm f4) with a shift function built in.
I've watched other comparison reviews and the laowa is supposed to be sharper in the corners than the Canon.
Thanks for the tip, I will look into it. Currently I use the RF 15-35, which is my workhorse lens. But I admit from time to time a TS option would be nice to have.
cheers
@@mibreit-photo I see that the magic shift converter is for Nikon or Canon lens to Sony E body. I don't know if there is one for Canon slr lens to Canon mirrorless yet.
Here's one review.
ua-cam.com/video/93QlRzs0OHg/v-deo.html
Thanks for the video, Michael. If you were to do a shoot like this again, would you go with a super wide angle 11mm/12mm lens instead and just crop do you think? I'm not against putting in the work and shooting to stitch a panoramic but it can go wrong sometimes! Would be nice to be able to get it in one. I'd be interested to know what you think. Thanks, Stewart.
As I said, for this scene I think a 12mm would be enough and I'd give this a try next time. But also, I would first rent such a lens, because a 12mm prime is nearly equally expensive. And because I haven't shot with one yet, I can only guess here.
On a note: renting the 11-24mm lens from Canon would have cost more than twice as much as renting the TS-E 17mm when I was in Hong Kong. So this also played some role in the decision making ;-)
@@mibreit-photo Thanks. As I am in the Nikon world where a ts-e 17mm lens does not exist, I have been looking at using a third party 12mm lens for my architecture instead. I should look at trying to rent one too as I don't think I'll ever know if it is viable until I test it myself..!
looks like you still corrected verticals after stitching: that is probably the reason of the lacking of sharpness on the top end. IF you stretch the top side of the image, you will loose sharpness on that side of corse. IF you have to correct verticals, better not to stretch but instead to push the bottom end inside: you will loose some part of the image but you will avoid this kind of problems.
Hello Lorenzo, if you watched the complete video, you might have seen that the problems I had were not due to any stretching I did in post ;-)
Michael Breitung First of all great picture. But he has a point. The loss in sharpness is not because of stretching of
Course, but since you had to tilt the camera it means that the focal plane wasn’t exactly on the building. So in Addition to being soft at the edges after shifting you weren’t in focus at the Top of the building, which was the reason why you had to refocus for the top. But you still got the shot and it looks quite good.
Hi Michael... was looking at buying this lens... can you tell me what aperture you were at? Thank you for your video :)
F9.5
Hi Michael. Im visitinf Rome in a few weeks. Do you think this lens or the 24mm ts would be useful to have?
I shot most of my photos in Rome with either the 70-200mm or the 16-35mm. The 17mm TS-E could be helpfull in some situations because the architecture in Rome is so huge. If you want to photograph the Colloseum, this might be a good place to use it. But it's no necessity.
PS: Maybe there's a place where you could rent one in Rome as I did in Hong Kong. If it's not too expensive, I think you could give it a go and see for yourself how you like it
Also, you could shot 4x5 velvia or provia and scan.
A 4x5 camera would be a little to big for me for travelling. But the quality would be great I am sure
The new Nikon 19mm PC lens is sharper at edges than Canon 17mm TSE. Some guy posted his comparison on web.
19mm wouldn't have been enough here though. Anyways, I got the shot in the end ;-)
@@mibreit-photo With all due respect the image itself is a ode to corporatization and urbanization, and unless a paid shoot, not profound or particularly meaningful. Such effort on more meaningful image (such as beautiful nature) would be understandable. Technically it is an extreme shift on 35mm format. Less extreme angle of view, you can rise and shift the 19 and shoot a series of shots as you shift, then stitch the entire series of panoramas. The Nikon 19 also does not have the flare of the Canon 17. But the 17 is awesome in lower linear distortion .
@ Such arrogance. Do you even see what you sound like?
Maybe you had to do the tilt funcion?
I actually tried it and it had a similar effect as refocussing for the frames that were shifted to the extremes. But again, leaving other parts out of focus. So I went with the focus stacking in the end, because it's easier to handle. The tilt normally works good for landscapes where you don't have large objects like the skysrapers I had here. Getting the tilt right in such an environment is not easy and I didn't want to have to come back a third time ;-)
I think to master the tilt with such a lens I would need a bit more than two days.
Unusable, really? Most non pixel peepers wouldn't notice, but I guess if you're chasing perfection..
Not good at all, kind of defeats the purpose
you are over reacting
haha... what would be your first reaction after a photo shoot you have been looking forward to more than one year and then, after the shoot, realizing that none of the photos you took was usable, because of some issues with the equipment ;-)
@@mibreit-photo well, di u test that lens before? i mean you had an year to prepare
couse if u did not test it, lol, what do you expect?
@@petrub27 I did expect this lens to perform as any lens with that price tag would. Such an unsharpness is not acceptable in my opinion. If you get such issues, then Canon should not allow so much shifting with that lens.
PS: I had just picked up that lens the day of the shoot (rented from Canon Customer Care) and didn't have much time to do intensive tests. So I have to admit I was a bit unprepared. But again, I didn't expect such severe problems from such an expensive lens. I learned my lesson ;-)