Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II Tilt-Shift Lens Sample Pictures

This picture of the fishing pier in Kure Beach, North Carolina was taken at 5:53 AM. The rising sun provided just the right amount of light on the clouds to balance the warm glow of the lights on the fishing pier shining onto the surf. A long exposure allows the surf to become a smooth blur.

Anytime is a great time to visit Ricketts Glen State Park, but the fall is my favorite time. With cloudy weather promising to provide a giant softbox over this waterfall-heaven (22 named falls and perhaps hundreds of smaller falls), I packed two of the world's best wide angle lenses on 5D Mark III bodies, a telephoto zoom lens I was reviewing on the 60D, a couple of other lenses, tripod, rain gear and other essentials (including food and water) totaling about 50 lbs. into my Lowepro Pro Trekker 400 AW Backpack and headed to my favorite Pennsylvania state park for a long day of photography.
 
Not long after hitting the Ganoga Glen trail, I realized that the water flow was very low. Low flow at some waterfalls is a big problem, but the falls at Ricketts Glen simply provide different opportunities.
 
One such opportunity came at Oneida falls, the second falls encountered on this trail when leaving the Lake Rose trailhead parking lot. The water is typically falling over the entire width of this 13' cliff. On this day, access to the cliff was available, though precarious due to slippery rock with very narrow footholds.
 
Avoiding dripping water as best I could, I placed one foot on a tiny ledge just above the water and the other foot was preventing me from falling into the cliff (with my elbow assisting some of the time). Similarly, I positioned one fully-retracted tripod leg straight out to the left and fully-extended the other two legs downward to catch in small crevices in the rock face. Note that one reason to buy a strong tripod is that you sometimes need to use it for your own safety support.
 
This position let me shoot through the back of the falls and incorporate some fall foliage into the frame.
 
The camera was set to C2 mode – my standard custom landscape mode. I have this mode programmed to enable mirror lockup, the 2-second self-timer and long exposure noise reduction. My ISO defaults to 100 and exposure is set to manual.
 
A B+W XS-PRO circular polarizer filter was used to cut the glare, especially noticeable on the water. I manually bracketed exposures slightly and used manual HDR to darken the colorful trees slightly.
 
This image was captured with what I consider to be one of the world's best landscape photography lenses, the Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5 L II Lens. It is phenomenally sharp and has little distortion. Another big advantage this lens has is the movements. In this example, I was able to tilt the lens slightly to the left to allow the very close foreground on the left and distant background on the right to both be in sharp focus without resorting to a more-diffraction-impacted narrower aperture.
 
In the end, a great lens (and camera) along with low water flow yielded my favorite image of the day.

The round rock beach near Otter Point is a classic sunrise location for photographing Acadia National Park. The TS-E lens was tilted forward a slight amount to keep both the foreground and background sharp. A 2-Stop B+W Neutral Density Filter along with ISO 50 was used to lengthen the exposure time - allowing the Atlantic Ocean to blur.

Hoar frost adds another color to this fall Cadillac Mountain scene.
 
Cadillac Mountain was closed early this morning. I returned later to find hoar frost melting in the early morning sun.
 
I typically shoot landscape photography with ISO 100 and an f/11 aperture with this lens/camera/tripod combination. Because of very high winds this day, I shot this picture at ISO 200 and f/8 to get a shutter speed fast enough to stop all of the motion. A slight forward tilt was used to keep both the foreground and background sharp.

A bee works a pink Cosmo flower in the early morning sun. Unfortunately, tilt-shift lens settings are not stored in the EXIF information for digital pictures. My recollection is that I used some forward tilt to keep the entire flower sharp and some shift to allow my position to be such that a shadow was not cast on the flower.

The sun rises over Bar Harbor on Mount Desert Island. This shooting location is a short hike from the top of Cadillac Mountain. A note: I rarely shoot at f/14 (especially with a tilt-shift lens) and did not need to go this narrow for this photograph. I was bracketing exposures and mistakenly went to f/14.

This grove of trees leans significantly away from this camera position. Lens shift was used to change the appearance to be more upright.

You have to get up early to beat the fishermen - and to get a balance of warm tungsten light and cool daylight colors. I need to find someone to change that light bulb.

Mid-May is a great time of the year to visit Ricketts Glen State Park. The water is generally flowing strongly. The foliage is bright green and some flowering flora can be found.
 
In this image, I was trying to use the lines in the foreground rock to lead the viewer's eye into the frame and directly into the interesting exposed roots. The sharp contrast between the bright water and the roots and rocks also serves the same purpose with perhaps even stronger emphasis. I find the curved path of the water through the frame to be pleasing and the bright green foliage adds color. The white flowers do not have a strong presence in the frame, but they are a positive subtle addition nonetheless.
 
It is rare to find me photographing a waterfall scene without a circular polarizer filter in use. This filter cuts reflections and makes a huge difference in the color saturation in such photos. Unlike many other filters from the film era, the effects of this filter cannot be duplicated in Photoshop (except perhaps by a handful of the top experts). This filter also reduces the amount of light reaching the sensor, requiring a longer shutter speed to adequately expose the image at the same aperture setting. The resulting .5 second exposure creates a nice motion blur to the water, conveying its movement.

The crew of a lobster boat works their traps just off the shoreline between Otter Point and Sand Beach in Acadia National Park. A small amount of tilt was used to keep the foreground and background sharp.

Using the right amount of rotation and tilt allows both the close foreground and more distant background hibiscus flowers to be in sharp focus.

This particular mountaintop is Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park. This is beautiful mountain is also easily accessible - you can drive to the top. This scene can be found from a short hike from the top-most parking area.

After a heavy rain, B. Reynolds Falls was flowing very strongly on this mid-May day. The water was so loud that by the end of the day, I was ready for some quiet time in the car.
 
At parks such as Ricketts Glen, it is easy to find the waterfalls and the images that can be made directly from the trails can be very nice. But, getting off the trails often makes new (and often better) composition possible. Always be looking for new angles.
 
To get this particular image, I climbed down the rocks beside a small walking bridge and precariously positioned myself and the tripod legs on strongly-sloped wet rocks just above the water. I often place the tripod into the water for such shots, but ... that only works if the water flow is not strong enough to cause vibrations in the tripod. The final composition emphasizes a balance of the features contained with most lines moving toward the center of the frame.

Using maximum lens tilt and a wide open aperture, even this wide angle tilt-shift lens can create a strong subject-emphasizing background blur.

The sunrise as seen from a Cadillac Mountain vantage point.

A gull flies over a grove of unique trees at Fort Fisher on the coast of North Carolina.

The sun rises on the Acadia coast. This coast provides enough rock formations to keep landscape photographers busy for years.

This is a 2-frame panorama stitched together in Photoshop CS4. One frame was shot with the lens fully shifted in one direction and the other was shot with the lens fully shifted in the opposite direction. One frame was simply laid over the top of the other - no correction was needed.

A 2-frame panorama made using the opposite full shift settings of this lens. Also seen in this picture is the uneven effect from a circular polarizer used at this extremely wide effective angle.

I've said before that McWay Falls in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, Big Sur is one of my favorite places. And I also said that access limits the photographic compositions able to be made here.
 
For this shot, I put my tripod through/over the fence to align the tree's branches to with the voids in the rocks below. Then I timed the show with a wave crashing onto the beach.