Originally posted by LeoTaylor This is a great thread, I had no idea such lenses existed. I have used the perspective correction in PSP-X to fix some city street shots where the buildings lean toward center. Often I find 100% correction does not look right, so back off a little to get a natural look.
Digital manipulation has to a large degree replaced the need for perspective control previously done with shift lenses, however there is no way (yet) that depth of field control can be done digitally which can be very effectively done with tilt lenses.
The Hartblei Super Rotator mount is one of the best implementations, as it can also be rotated through 360 deg, allowing tilt (and shift) in any plane. The Arax mount and even the Nikon and Canon mounts don't have the same degree of flexibility.
Hartblei now manufacture versions with 35mm, 65mm, 80mm and 120mm lenses which are Russian made based on old Zeiss designs and equipment, they have some issues with flare control, mainly when stopped down, but are optically pretty decent. The quality of the mechanical engineering of the Hartblei lenses is extremely high, very well finished all metal and very smooth actions, very impressive.
They now also supply the latest German Zeiss lenses and can mount customers own MF lenses from certain makes, both these options are somewhat more expensive, but the quality from the latest Zeiss glass would be exceptional, but beyond the reach or requirement of most people, including myself, but if one was doing a lot of studio product work, I could imagine it being very worthwhile.