Why Shift and Tilt Superrotators?

During the last 10 years unique and exclusive to Hartblei (we welcome Canons recent anouncement to agree on the usefulness of this feature) is that our Shift and Tilt lenses are so-called "superrotators". All Shift and Tilt functions are independently usable with full 360 degrees rotation each. The result is a functionality and quality (up to 200 lp/mm resolution) that comes very close to that of a viewcamera, however with the mobility of a 35 mm camera.

Traditional lenses allow only to control the depth-of-field (DOF) by using focus and aperture. The perspective is fixed. If the photographer wants to correct tilted lines in the image, created by tilting the camera, it can not be done.

An electronical correction of tilted lines using software is resulting in a bad quality (pixels that are not present in the original shot can not be added by some piece of software without a loss in quality). The time for computing and editing the corrected image slows down the production process. The necessary cropping of the image also removes pixels, resulting in a smaller photo. In general, we recommend for a perfect workflow to do any steps analogue that can be done analogue (during the shooting), and do any required corrections digitally during post-production. We have arranged a partnership with Nurizon to achieve this.

Shift and Tilt lenses offer a parallel shift of the lens. This allows to capture a scene without tilting lines. The image circle of Hartblei lenses is typically more than 80 mm. Using the "Shift" function you can remove tilted lines without tilting the camera. It's done "in the lens" before the frame is actually captured.

Also, the Shift function allows you to create so-called "Stitches", i.e. images that have been stitched together from multiple photos. With 10 mm Shift and a full format sensor (e.g. Canon 1ds mark II) you can reach an enlargement of the file by 183%. A 16.7 MPixel camera suddenly becomes a 30.5 MPixel camera! The usable sensor size (net) increases to 44x36. With a crop factor of 1.3 the 40 mm lens behaves like a 30 mm lens, the 80 mm lens like a 61 mm, and the 120 mm like a 92 mm lens. That's why we think the discussion about the focal lengths of Superrotators is utterly pointless.