The day Canon announced the upcoming release of the Canon 5d Mark II camera body (the new 5d body), we decided to purchase the Canon 14mm lens. We love our 28mm tilt/shift lens, but the processing time for doing high dynamic range photos was simply too much. By moving to the 14mm lens, there is 1/3 of the work because there are fewer images.
Here's an example from the 14mm lens on the current 5d back. This is a blended strobe/high dynamic range photo. As we have continued to do this, our understanding of how to create these images has gotten better and better.
What I like about this lens is that the lines are kept straight - VERY little distortion. Quite amazing, really. However, I've read comparisons with the Nikon 12-24, and that lens is apparently brighter and more vivid. This is less of a concern for us since we are doing overlays with a highly saturated high dynamic range image. Plus, with the new 5D back, I could keep all of my old lenses and get a big jump in resolution. Overall, I think the image makes the living room look pretty nice.
The week before I found out about the new 5D and bought the lens I rented Canon's 16-35mm lens for a photo shoot. Here's a photo at 16mm. This was a nice lens, but, here's a word of CAUTION. There is a LOT of barrel distortion going on with this lens. We HAD to use our correcting software (Ptlens) to remove the barrel distortion as that improved the images a LOT.
How about those reflections in the granite! That's what the HDR blending will give you.
Finally, I should note WHY the new 5D back was the decision to change. The new 5D is 22 megapixels. That means that we will get the same 20 megapixel image with the 14mm lens that we've been getting with the tilt/shift lens, and we have about 1/3 of the post-processing work. So, for us, it was worth the $2100 that we spent.
I'm not getting rid of the tilt/shift lens. I plan to use it when I need to create a giant-sized image (which we sometimes create as posters inside listings). With the new 5d back and the tilt/shift lens, I'll be able to create a 40 megapixel image, which is in the range of the current generation of Hasselblad cameras. Again, the post-processing time will increase, but that's OK as long as I'm not doing it with every single image.
All the best.
Margaret Hokkanen, Encinitas and Carlsbad Real Estate
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