2018 Colorado Fall Color Road Trip – Day 3 – Part 2

After the early morning photo shoot, I continued along Owl Creek Pass Road, enjoying the fall scenery and looking for a place for mid-morning photography and some experimentation with PC (Perspective Control in Nikon terms) lenses, commonly referred to as tilt/shift lenses.

Tilt/Shift lenses are typically used in product and architectural photography.  The shift allows one to make vertical objects, like buildings, look vertical, rather than tilted, as they do with ordinary lenses.  The tilt function of the lenses allows one to get a deeper depth of field with a large aperture, rather than having to go to a small aperture for a deep DOF.

Within the past twelve months I purchased a couple of used PC lenses from local photographers.  The lenses are quite expensive, if purchased new and not cheap, when a good used one is found.  The first one that I purchased was a Nikon PC-E 24mm.  The photographer that I acquired it from had used it for wedding photography, a surprising use of this lens, I thought; but one can get some special effects with it that makes for unique photographs.

The second tilt/shift lens that I acquired was an older Nikon PC85mm.  The photographer from which I purchased it had used it for product photography.  I had seen some interesting landscape photos taken with such a lens,  so I wanted to experiment with one and not wanting to spend a fortune on a lens that I might not use often, I knew it would be more economical and practical to get a good used lens.

These lenses are all manual focus, which can be a challenge for us older folks as our eye sight becomes less sharp.  The metering is also manual with PC lenses.  The PC-E (E designating electronic) will meter with the lens in the non-tilt, non-shift mode, so the exposure needs to be determined prior to shifting or tilting or one might shoot test shots and adjust the exposure by trial and error.  I found it best to estimate the exposure prior to tilting, shoot a test shot after tilting and tweak the exposure as appropriate.

Thinking that a forest might be a suitable place for experimentation, I found a couple of places near Silver Jack Reservoir where I could walk into an Aspen forest just off of a roadway.  A few of the test shots are posted below.

Many of the Aspen trees along the roadway into a parking area at Silver Jack Reservoir had initials or names, etc. carved into the trunks.  I happened to note that the tree on the left of the above image had my initials on it.  (No, I did not put them there).  Your eyes are ok, the image is blurry except along a horizontal band in the upper 1/3 of the photo.  The technique for getting such an image is to focus on a nearby subject, then tilt the lens to bring more distant subjects into focus.  You will notice that the large f/5.6 aperture gives a good depth of field through a portion of the image.

The photo above is also taken with the PC 85mm, but with an f/8 aperture.  Moving to a smaller apertures seems to widen the area of focus, as it increases the DOF.

The 24mm PC-E is a bit easier to work with than the PC 85mm.  It seems to give more leeway in acquiring focus while tilting than does the PC85mm.  In the above photo, I first focused on the rough bark on the tree on the left, then tilted the lens to increase the DOF.  Tilting the lens also affects the near focus a bit, so that a portion of the near object goes out of focus as the more distant objects come into focus.

The lower photo above is the same composition as the previous one, but with a larger aperture.

The same composition as previously, but at f/11.  I think the wider focus area is apparent.  The lighting changed, as well as the aperture, so the exposure is a bit different.

Perhaps these are not the best images for illustrating the effects obtained by these lenses, but I’m thinking the tilt function can be useful for emphasizing certain aspects in an image, perhaps with a “tunnel” vision effect.

These lenses also rotate, so one can put the tilt and shift at various angles.  So far, I’ve only experimented with vertical tilts; but I think tilting at various angles to the camera will be appropriate in some situations.

These lenses all are configured by the manufacturer with the tilt and shift at 90 degrees to each other; but, as I have learned in my research on these lenses, these can be easily reconfigured to have the tilt and shift aligned in the same direction, making it possible to keep vertical objects vertical, while also increasing the DOF with the tilt function.  I have not yet tried this, but I am thinking that I might.  One might pay Nikon or a professional camera shop to reconfigure a lens, but it is an easy do-it-yourself operation, just be careful with the E versions, since there is wiring within these lenses and one cannot rotate the lens parts more than 90 degrees or damage to the wiring is probable.  Information on how to modify these lenses (Nikon and Canon) can be found via an online search.  Here is one link that describes the procedure for Nikon PC lenses http://www.achim-sieger.de/en/axis-change-pc-e-nikkor-24mm/

The 24mm PC-E is a very sharp lens and can be used in a non-tilt, non-shift mode as an ordinary 24mm prime.  While shooting with no tilt and no shift, I noted that occasional breezes shook loose leaves and I thought shooting them as they fell might make interesting photos and maybe brief time lapse videos.  I could not use the built in time lapse function of the D850 very easily, since the breezes were not predictable, so I elected to just shoot a series of shots using the remote release, whenever the leaves began to fall.  I did not even take time to set the camera to continuous mode, I just used the remote release to shoot as quickly as I could press the shutter release button.  It is best to view the following photos and time lapse videos on a large screen, otherwise the falling leaves are not easily observed, in this very brief video.  To make a longer video, would have taken much more time and many more shots and I did not think it worthwhile to expend that much effort to do so. (This video is also posted to my Flickr page).

The falling leaves are fairly easily seen in this cropped version (just above) of one of my images.

Look for very brief yellow spots within the video to see the falling leaves.  If nothing else were moving, I might have made gotten leaf trail type images (similar to star trails); but if nothing else were moving, there would be no falling leaves, either.

I got feedback from one of my blog followers regarding the video format (mp4).  Apparently, not everyone can view these formats.  While I can convert an mp4 to an avi and other video formats, I cannot view an avi on my MAC computer, so I have no idea how the avi looks or even if it will work in this post.  I tried to insert an avi into this post, but I’m rather sure that it would not be visible, so I removed it.  At this time I have no solution for this problem.

I later used the PC-E 24mm to photograph at Bisti in New Mexico and I will post photos from that shoot in a later post.  I’ve not yet had time to review those photos in detail, so I hope I have suitable ones to share from that shoot.