Nikon has announced new products including a D60 DSLR as a follow-up to the popular D40X. Interesting to a smaller segment of the population is the addition of a 24mm Perspective Control lens. Canon has had one of these for some time while Nikon only offered an 85mm PC lens.
Perspective control, or tilt-shift, lenses have movements that allow you to correct for perspective distortion (Wikipedia has more info). For instance, when shooting architecture from a low angle, you can “straighten” the building so that it doesn’t appear to lean back. Happily, that particular function is now also available in Photoshop. I use the “distort” function to do this but there is also a “perspective” option.
An additional advantage of tilt-shift lenses is their ability to distort the plane of focus. By tilting the front element you can angle the plane that is in focus to artificially create deeper (or more shallow) depth of field. Landscape photographers have been doing this with bellows movements on large format cameras for decades. And then there is the ability to use this effect to take shots that look like tiny models.
Whether any of these uses allows you to justify the rather steep price is up to you but at least those of us on the Nikon system now have a wide-angle, tilt-shift option.
I saw that this morning on dpreview and almost sent you an e-mail. Have you ordered one yet?
-Bruce
No, I haven’t placed an order. There was a time that I would have jumped on a wide-angle tilt-shift but being able to make similar perspective adjustments in Photoshop has reduced my need for such a lens by about 90%. Still, there are times I’d love to have one.
-Michael