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canon TS-E 17

wayne_s

New member
Here are two shots of Stanford Memorial Church with new 17 TS-E on 1ds3.
The first one is shifted some to limit the courtyard foreground and the 2nd is max shifted up. The next day I went back there to shoot some comparison shots with my 14-24G Nikon lens. So far the 17 seems to match the center sharpness of my 14-24G at 17mm but is softer in the extreme borders and corners compared to my 14-24G at f8 when unshifted and at f8 or f9. I want to do more testing just to confirm this. I will post example shots to show this.
 

Arne Hvaring

Well-known member
Wayne, thanks for these. The 17 mm looks good, although hard to judge without crops. That it is bettered by the 14-24 Nikon zoom isn't surprising; that lens is a masterstroke and at 17 mm it is in the best FL range.
As for the 17 mm TS, I wonder if there could be some curvature of field involved, not inconceivable given the large FOV of this lens.
Anyways, looking forward to your further results, highly relevant in my case.
 

wayne_s

New member
Thanks Arne for looking at these test shots.
Here are some 100% crop shots of the image on the left above.
I think the top and bottom center crops look great.
But you can see the slight loss in resolution in the far left of
the lower left side crop. Not bad though. This was with the lens shifted up some.
I now realize that I need to go back and shoot some maximum shift shots in the longer side direction since that will be worse than shifting in the shorter side direction.
I will also post next my 14-24G and 17 TS-E comparsion shots with crops.
I moved closer to the church to make sure the corners were contained within the front wall of the church and so you can see the corner performance including the distortion near the edge of the frame. The sides of the church seemed to distort outward some when doing the maximum shift up.
 

Arne Hvaring

Well-known member
Thank you Wayne, interesting. I agree with your assessment. Assuming these are taken at f8, we are probably looking at peek performance overall.
However if you reshoot the scene, it might be worth trying some focus bracketing just to see how the edges behave.
 

wayne_s

New member
Arne,
The above shots were taken at f9, not f8.
The next shots are the TS-E 17 unshifted at f9 vs. the 16-35 mkI at f9
with same shutter speed for both ,was in manual mode.
First one of each comparison is the TS-E 17.
These were still far enough back that I didn't see a lot of distortion at he edges. Crops are 100%.
 
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wayne_s

New member
Ok, here are the comparison shots between the TS-E 17 and the 14-24G Nikon.
The first one is the TS-E 17 unshifted at f9, the 2nd is the 14-24 is at ~17mm and ~f8.
Crops are 100%.
I take back my earlier remarks that the TS-E 17's center sharpness equals the 14-24G. I must have been confusing the 16-35 shots with the 14-24G.
The 14-24G is slightly sharper in the center and sharper in the corners/borders.
 

wayne_s

New member
I think I will redo my test shots from another day when I was varying the aperture and also the amount of shift. The camera was not properly leveled and the angle was not perfectly straight on so this may have caused some of the distortion.
Going to sleep now. :)
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Thanks for the report Wayne. I would say the 17 shift's performance is still quite good, given what it is.
 

Arne Hvaring

Well-known member
Thank you Wayne. So far I see little to discourage me from acquiring this lens, if I can convince myself that I need it :)
Any further results would of course be much appreciated.
 

wayne_s

New member
Here is a shot I took today after work with TS-E 17 of the Agnews Clock Tower in Santa Clara, CA. First shot is a reduced version of the original shot,
which doesn't do justice to the amount of detail captured in the original by my 1ds3.
But the next two shots are 100% crops of the top-center clock face on the tower and the next crop is the far bottom right corner.
Just and awesome lens. It is a real treat to have ultra wide angle with shift capability and not lose much in the IQ dept compared to a regular prime.
 

mark1958

Member
Wayne ... After correcting for a bit of difference in the exposures, I think the 17mm TSE is pretty close to the 14-24 in terms of sharpness in the corners. The Nikon may be a bit better but darn close. I had the Nikon for a bit I did not like what i had to do to use it was too complicated.
 
S

Shelby Lewis

Guest
The question is... once you correct perspective of the 14-24 in post, does the loss of detail due to interpolation even the playing field? I'd suspect that if the intent of a shoot was to produce a persp. corrected shot, the 17mm might actually be a tad better in the end... but I don't speak from experience here.
 

wayne_s

New member
Marc,
Yeah, looking back at my original raw shots at 100% again I agree that the difference between the Canon 17 at f9 is very close to the Nikon 14-24 at 17 f8. The nikon will be sharper in the corners at f5.6 and below. I guess I had some prejudice against a TS lens like the 17 being able to match up with a top of the line wide angle but I think Canon did an excellent job here. The size of the image circle must be so big, so I don't see that much of a dropoff in resolution even when you shift all the way in the long direction.
When I get time next week, I hope to post some of my testing shots and hope to meet up with Marc to do some comparison shots between 17 + 1.4 and 24 TS-E mk2.

Shelby, you are right that you lose some in post doing the correction and I hate fiddling with correcting it in PS.
 

mark1958

Member
Wayne... I ended up breaking down and buying a 17mm TSE. i am so impressed with the new 24mm TSE. I stopped over at the Stanford Church and took some shots with the 24mm TSE and sigma 10-22 inside and outside the church. I would have liked to have tried the 17mm TSE today .
 

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
That church ought to put a collection box up front labeled "For Lens Testers"
-bob
 

wayne_s

New member
Wayne... I ended up breaking down and buying a 17mm TSE. i am so impressed with the new 24mm TSE. I stopped over at the Stanford Church and took some shots with the 24mm TSE and sigma 10-22 inside and outside the church. I would have liked to have tried the 17mm TSE today .
Congrats Mark on the new 17 TS-E.
Wow, both the 17 and 24 mk2.
Is the 24 much sharper?
 

mark1958

Member
BOb this cracked me up... That is a great idea.. I think we should provide you with an honorary degree... :). On second thought, I think as an employee, if i were to put up such a box -- the headlines might not read too well.


Wayne. THe lens was shipped but I will likely get it Monday. I am still happy to meet up with you and do some tests together. I can say that i have tried so many of the wide and super wide angles on canon in the past. The contax zeiss 21mm distagon was king for resolution (albeit some did not like the distortion). Each at f2.8 it was amazing. Whatever the formula for the Nikon zoom is -- well that is another masterpiece. It is just so darn difficult and a pain to use on canon. So now i have settled (ya right) on the sigma 12-24. At f8-16 and higher it is pretty darn good at the wider end and it is quite inexpensive. The corners are not stellar but most of the time does not matter. My son has started High School Marching Band (although not something I have promoted) and i am one of the two photographers. The sigma lens has been quite useful. Now we come to the 24mm TSE and i am just really impressed. Canon finally got the wide end right. I can use this as a 24mm prime. I mean it may not be as good as the L 1.4 until stopped down but most of the time i shoot wide angle stopped down. The shift is very useful. I am anxious to try the 17mm TSE inside the church as well. M

That church ought to put a collection box up front labeled "For Lens Testers"
-bob
 

wayne_s

New member
Met up with Mark at Stanford and took some comparison shots with his TS-E 24mk2 and my TS-E 17 + 1.4x TC. Here are two crops, the first one is the 17 + 1.4xTC and the 2nd is the 24. Mark also took shots with his H3D with the 28 which I will let him post which is interesting to compare against these shots.
Thanks again Mark and it was nice meeting you.
 

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
I am not too surprised to see the 24 do better than the 17+1.4TC, but I AM surprised to see how well the 17+1.4TC actually did.
-bob
 
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