Canon Equipment for Architecural Photography

To avoid buying the exorbitant prices for perspective correcting lenses, for
architectual photography I often use a 14mm lens. If the film plane is
absolutely vertical, the vertiacl building lines will be parallel in the film
frame. The negative or slide can be cropped to use the area of interest. A
gridded focussing screen can help her in setting up.

Justin van der Spuy wrote:

Justin:
your lens choice mainly depends on the kind of pictures you want to
take. I use a 24mm as well as a 400mm for shooting architecture. Since
you use the EOS system, you can access the whole range of Canon's
excellent TS-E lenses that allow shifting (and even tilting) - perfect
for "technical" architecutral photography. For creative applications you
won't need them. My only recommendation: by all means avoid any zooms.
Due to their visible linear distortion (ar least at the shortest and
longest setting) they are useless for this kind of photography. Get some
good primes.

The filter question you mentioned is somewhat tricky. First: will there
be various light sources in your pictures? E.g. daylight and neon, or
neon and tungsten, or tungsten and flash, or... In this case you can't
get neutral results - if one light source appears neutral, the other(s)
will produce a color cast. The best solution to this is Fuji Reala print
film, which is said to produce the by far best results under mixed
lighting. Have the prints made by a good custom lab.

By the way, why do you want perfect neutral colors at all? Especially
night shots look very nice with various light sources in them: A deep
night-blue sky, greenish neon lights, warm tungsten-lit roomlights, etc.

If you're sure that there will be just one single light source (or at
least various that share the same color temperature, like daylight and
flash), filters should be no problem. Tungsten light can be converted by
a standard blue conversion filter or (better) by using a tungsten film.
The only tricky thing is neon light. There are dozens of films and
hundreds of different neon lights, and all combinations are different.
I haven't yet seen a filter that would give decent results under most
circumstances. You'll have to do your own tests with CC-filters - or
just use Fuji Reala again. See above.

HTH

Dieter

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I have the 24 tilt shift. With buildings with repeated patterns (i.e.
bricks, stone cladding)you'll need to watch the way it spreads stuff out
at the edges, and at extreme shifts, you'll need to watch out for filters
vignetting.
That said,not much else in 35mm will do the job as well.

"Justin van der Spuy" <
The only special suggestion for lens is a 24TS-E. This lens will
correct the keystoning effect (building falls over) that you get when
pointing a lens up. Unfortunately it costs about $1,500. If that's
not affordable, then it doesn't really matter what lens you use. Use
what you have.
The type of filter to use depends on the type of lighting. If it's
tungsten light, you need a 80 series filter. If it's fluorescent
light, you might need several since there are several types of
fluorescent, but a FL-D or CC30M is commonly used.

Marcio
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If you are serious, you have to spring for the T/S lenses. Very expensive
though (about $1300 each). Available in 24, 45, and 90mm flavors. I've
been looking for used lenses, but people want 80% or more of the new price
for them and they have mechanical movements that can wear. I have rented
them before for about $20/day. This is the way to go to see if you like how
they work. Once you use them awhile to correct for convergence, shots taken
with normal lenses just don't cut it.

You're probably aware the most architectural photographers use large format
cameras which provide the advanced movements they need.

If you just want to hack around, then use whatever you have before springing
for anything.

- Mark

Justin van der Spuy wrote in message <6d3e8n$>...