A WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER’S TOOLS: TILT/SHIFT LENS

A tilt/shift (perspective control) lens at a wedding?? Why would you? 

It’s a fair question. These lenses are very specialist, and are used largely by architectural photographers. They generally require manual focussing, they are fiddly and finicky and enjoy life best when on a tripod. Their purpose is not for portraits, but for making images of buildings where the vertical perspective is “controlled” – where the vertical lines appear vertical, parallel and not leaning in towards each other.

If you are interested in tilt/shift lenses more generally, Adobe have a good introductory article on their use. But it won’t help you with my initial question – why on earth take one of these to a wedding? At the 24mm focal length of mine, I have two or three other lenses that give me auto focussing and a wider aperture. What’s the point?

Nikkor 24mm f3.5 PCE lens 

My Tilt/Shift lens is the Nikkor 24mm f3.5 PCE. It’s an older model now, bought secondhand. Even so, it wasn’t cheap. I bought it principally because I do quite a lot of interior architectural work – mainly kitchens for Affordable Granite. (You can see a few examples of it in action in this article.) But I generally take it to weddings. Here’s why.

The 24mm PCE lens is, in the first place, simply a great 24mm lens. I think it is sharper than my zooms, and they are good. It does require manual focussing, but for shooting a wedding group where you are stopping down a bit for front to back sharpness, it isn’t difficult to use. The example here is from Jonah and Charis’ wedding at Salomon’s Estate, Tunbridge Wells, Kent. I admit, the lens was on the tripod-mounted camera anyway, but the 24mm worked well in the space, and the results were consistent and good. I tend to mount a high-pixel count body (D800/D850) on the tripod, keeping the D5 and D6 in hand, and a seriously sharp lens gives great images which can then be worked in post-processing.

No tilt/shift was applied in this shot from the Salomon’s Estate wedding – the lens is being used as a conventional 24mm wide angle lens.

In the Gold Room, Salomon’s Estate

Whole wedding party, Salomon’s Estate

But the real point of the Tilt/Shift lens is to do justice to great architecture. Why do wedding couples choose certain places for their weddings? Why can some venues charge so much for a wedding? The answer always boils down to the buildings and their ambience. Having paid out for an amazing setting, it’s worth hiring a wedding photographer who can do justice to the structures around the couple.

So, here in this entire wedding party shot from Salomon’s Estate, the tilt/shift lens has been used to include the top of the house behind the group. To shoot this with a conventional lens, I would have needed to get further back and cropped. The result would not have been as sharp in the detail on the faces. See below for a close-up of just a small part of the gathering.

I find that most of the time I use the perspective control lens to include higher parts of buildings while shooting in landscape orientation. The lens allows me to lose some of the foreground so as to get the whole building in, as above at Salomon’s Estate. But for this wedding last week at St Paul’s Cathedral, I went to portrait mode and maxed out the perspective control shift so as to get the entire West Door in the picture. The shift is in the same direction – upwards – but the lens itself has to twist on the camera body so that it is moving in the right direction.

Pat and Alex were wowed by the scale of the doors – as was I. “Can you really get it all in” they asked. I could with the Fisheye, or the 10mm if I’d had it with me, but the 24mm PCE did the best job. Very happy with this unusual shot.

Alex and Pat outside the West Door after their wedding at St Paul’s Cathedral 

Alex and Pat were keen to include this inscription to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee outside St Paul’s Cathedral

The vast majority of uses of Shift lenses involve using the “rising” feature to get higher elements into the picture. But here is an example of using the falling aspect to increase the foreground content. The couple asked specifically if I could get the whole inscription in. Once again, the Fisheye could have done it, but with the added distortion characteristic of the type, plus lots of extraneous elements (members of the public!) creeping into the picture. I was very pleased with the result here.

Using a manual focus, Perspective Control lens at a wedding is not for the faint-hearted. Nor is Tilt/Shift to be overused – I have had plenty of weddings where I have had the lens with me and not used it. But when you need it, it’s great to have with you! It may be that not every venue has the symmetry and grandeur of State Paul’s Cathedral, or Salomon’s Estate near Tunbridge Wells, but when you are at that kind of building, you really want to do justice to it.

…as a wedding photographer I love my 24mm Tilt/Shift lens

To contact me to enquire about my wedding photography use my Contact Form or just text (07983 787889) or email me at Andrew@AndrewKingPhotography.co.uk

Photos © copyright Andrew King