danielmoore
New member
For architectural work, as much as I love the 14-24G I'm too frequently requiring tilt/shift movements. The 14-24G has excellent control of barrel distortion at the 24mm end, where I use it the most, so good that it needs no further correction in post. It looks as though the 24mm PC-E however has pronounced distortion, to the extent that ALL architectural images made with it will suffer noticeably. For the stringent requirements of architectural work this necessitates a round of correction in post and here's my dilemma. How to approach distortion correction when the image has been shifted? I have used a handful of programs over the years (nearly all implementing PanoTools) and pretty much settled on PTGui for correcting tilt and lens distortion. It seems possible to build a profile for the 24 PC-E based on a stitched image that covers the extremes of it's shift range and then assigning shift values to later images that represent zones of that overall image circle, but that would necessitate recording shift values used for each image taken. Not exactly a smooth workflow, saving time in post by spending more in record keeping.
Then there's assigning control points along straight lines in each image to correct each independently. This is what I do now and it goes fairly quickly. But what a rub, shelling out a cool 2K for the added advantage of tilt/shift and still having to manually adjust each image to straighten what ought to be straight.
I'd like to hear ideas on how you work with this lens, if there are options I havent' thought of with regard to getting to the end result quicker, if there's a better choice of lens. I'm considering selling my 14-24 as I almost never go wider than 24mm with it and replacing it with the 24 PC-E and stitching for the times when I need wider. I should mention I'm using a D700 and a full complement of Nikon glass so the 24 TSE isn't too attractive an option, if it had better distortion characteristics. If I shot landscapes I might simply live with it's behavior...
Then there's assigning control points along straight lines in each image to correct each independently. This is what I do now and it goes fairly quickly. But what a rub, shelling out a cool 2K for the added advantage of tilt/shift and still having to manually adjust each image to straighten what ought to be straight.
I'd like to hear ideas on how you work with this lens, if there are options I havent' thought of with regard to getting to the end result quicker, if there's a better choice of lens. I'm considering selling my 14-24 as I almost never go wider than 24mm with it and replacing it with the 24 PC-E and stitching for the times when I need wider. I should mention I'm using a D700 and a full complement of Nikon glass so the 24 TSE isn't too attractive an option, if it had better distortion characteristics. If I shot landscapes I might simply live with it's behavior...