Thanks. Like you I shoot mainly architecture so this doesn't sound like a good suggestion at all. I have three Contax lenses and love the character in their rendering, but none of them are really suited for a shift capable wide angle which is what I'm looking for now.
Maybe and maybe not ... how much shift and/or wide angle do you need?
FYI, I photograph mostly at night, so the corners of most of my photos are hidden in inky black shadows, so I'm usually not too concerned about any vignetting or a loss of resolution that occurs at the outside of the image circles. I find that ~5 mm of rise / fall (approx. 20% of the frame height) to be adequate for 95% of my photos and most (but alas, not all) C/Y lenses I've tried so far can handle that.
Unfortunately, the 18/f4 is one of those that can't handle that, as it's limited to just 2-3 mm of rise / fall before vignetting hard; ditto for the 21/f2.8. The 28/f2.8 is limited to 3-4 mm of rise / fall, but the 25/f2.8 and 35/f2.8 are good for 5-6 mm. The 45/f2.8 Tessar starts to go soft at 5-6 mm of rise / fall but vignettes softly out to 10-12 mm, so if you don't have much detail in the corners, it works surprisingly well. And so you know, I haven't tried the 15/f3.5, 28/f2 or 35/f1.4 lenses, so can't comment on those.
One lens that
does work surprisingly well for shift movements on an A7R sensor is the Contax N 17-35/f2.8 zoom, as it's good for at least 5 mm of rise / fall movements from ~20 mm to 35 mm and peaking at ~12 mm between 33 to 35mm! Of course, it has an electronic aperture, which is a bit of a PITA to work with, and there are no commercial shift adapters available for it, so you'll have to adapt and/or fabricate one yourself.
I have the 17 and 24 Canon tilt shifts and they are excellent, but I'm looking for something less sterile (a harsh way of putting it, I know) and neutral looking to add to my working collection.
Prior to my switch to using C/Y lenses as my primary lenses a few years ago, I had been using five Sigma Art lenses, including the 24-35/f2 zoom. I initially bought into them because of their f1.4 apertures, even though I almost always take my photos between f5.6 and f9, because the faster aperture makes composing and focusing my photos at night considerably easier than at f2.8 (or f3.5, in the case of my C645 lenses). Most of them also projected oversize image circles, so offered an adequate range of rise / fall movements for my purposes.
After ~15 months of working with them almost exclusively, though, I started to find their rendering style to be -- as you put it -- too harsh and sterile and over another 4-6 months, this really began to bug me. At which point, I was asked by another photographer to determine the size of the image circle of the C/Y 35/f2.8 and he sent me his to test. In the process, I also took a few photos with it and was reminded of how much I enjoyed the look of the C/Y lenses I had used way back in the 1980s before I moved on to larger formats and view cameras.
Unlike the photos I took with my Sigma Art 35/f1.4 lens, the photos I took with it were anything but harsh and sterile looking and I immediately fell in love with it. When I reported my results to the owner of the lens, he decided the image circle it projected wasn't sufficient for his purposes, so he agreed to sell it to me and within a few months, I had sold all of my Art lenses and acquired a half-dozen C/Y lenses to replace them.
FWIW, I also have a decent amount of experience with the Canon TS-E lenses owned by a couple of my friends, so know exactly what you mean when you refer to them as being "sterile." (That said, the new 50 mm TS-E lens is an absolute gem and if I used that focal length more than just a few times each year, I would seriously consider buying one. But I don't, so my C/Y 45/f2.8 and 50/f1.7 primes, and especially my 35-70/f3.4 zoom, are adequate for my purposes on those occasions when I need a lens longer than 35 mm.)
I actually love the look of my Sigma Merrills more than my Sonys or Phase Ones, but Sigma never took them to the place that the sensor deserves and they are of limited use professionally. Such a shame.[/QUOTE]
I loved mine, too! But for my low-light, long-exposure-at-base-ISO nighttime photography, the files they capture are orders of magnitude too noisy and as a practical matter, they are best used for exposures that are significantly shorter than, say, 1/2 second, which makes them a non-starter for me. <sigh>
Anyway, I've rambled on for too long here -- I didn't have time to compose a short post ... lol! -- so good luck with your decision and whatever direction you decide to head from here!