Panoramas with shift lens

I have been making panoramas by stitching many vertical slices from a 5DII with a 17-40 or 24-105. In most cases, I tilt the camera down as there is too much sky in a level composition. How much advantage would there be to using a (e.g. 24mm) tilt shift lens and shifting down? Would these shots stitch more easily? What should I expect the differences to be?

Any experience out there?


Thanks,
Mike.

Mike
With a TS-E lens you can shift the composition to raise the horizon while keeping the lens perfectly level. Vertical objects will remain vertical rather tan diverging. When you stitch, the parts will fit together without curving, so you don't need to crop to get a straight edged panorama.

It should be noted that there are limits to how far the tilt/shift lens will shift. I just got the Canon 24 TSE & have played with that feature for panos. It is great as Buck says about keeping the vertical things vertical. But you may or may not get enough shift if your tripod position is much higher or lower than the scene you are shooting.

As with any lens like that, I've found it very helpful to rent one for a weekend & try it out. It's much cheaper than having to plunk down the coin to buy it sight unseen.

theres a thread on RMNP right now that shows some examples using the TSE, you might find it interesting.

I've been more and more stitches with my tilt-shift lenses and it's fairly painless. My approach is to shift the lens to the left, take a shot, then shift the lens to the right and take a second shot. Then using photo merge in Photoshop I join the two. Keep in mind, when you stitch 2 images shot this way horizontally, you a ratio of approx. 1:2.35 or an image size of 13"x30.5".

Here's an example of what that looks like:
http://www.naturephotographers.net/imagecritique/ic.cgi?a=vp&pr=153725&CGISESSID=7fc7ee10818e5b05e57cc96038ea2b90&u=26597

When using a TS-E lens for panoramic images, you may still have a hard time lining up the two shots if you have foreground in the photo. Technically, you should be shifting the *body*, and not the lens. If the lens remains stationary, you will have an image that will remain true from foreground to background. It is possible to shift the lens, then slide the camera back in the QR mount so that the lens remains in the same position and the body effectively moves. Again, this is not an issue unless you're including some extreme foreground --- but that is something that the 24mm permits for.

Thanks a lot for alll of the very useful input. I already own the 24 T&S but have never used it for panoramas. This gives me a lot of food for thought.

Moose Peterson has a fair amount of information about tilt-shift panoramas on his website (in the blog portion, if I remember correctly). I've read through it in the past and it seemed like a fairly good expanation of the mechanics of using a tilt-shift lens to create panoramas. You might want to check it out.

Phil,

Thanks for the additional tip. I will check out Moose's site.

Thanks to Phil,

The article on Moose's site is very impressive and useful