Canon hasn’t updated a couple of their tilt-shift lenses in a while, but it now seems like they won’t have to. According to a post found by Photography Bay, Canon has a brand new patent to make all their lenses tilt shift capable with an adapter. It’s a much more affordable way of doing it vs creating new lenses all over again that can resolve 50MP worth of surface area on a sensor.
Canon isn’t the first to do this though, Hasselblad has had an adapter for a while as do many medium format camera manufacturers. It’s a better way of approaching the solution in our opinion.
The method of going about creating the Tilt Shift adapter involves having its own CPU and no optics.
According to Photography Bay:
“”First off, the Canon Tilt-Shift Adapter has its own CPU inside and no optics. But it works hand-in-hand with the Canon EOS body and EF lenses to not only serve as a pass-through for communication but to also take on some processing burdens to make tilt-shift work on different cameras and lenses. Additionally, there are motorized drivers inside of the adapter that can drive the shift and tilt axes using controls on the camera (or the adapter itself).
The adapter can process the image preview information based on the camera sensor format and the reduced image circle to limit the amount of shift or tilt so that the image is not cut off from the sensor.”
Pretty cool sounding so far; but then consider the fact that because of this happening, there is going to be cropping on the sensor due to the way that the imaging circle works. Because of this, it’s probably best used with the higher end megapixel bodies like the 5DS and 5DS R. Though we’re not quite sure how this will work with third party lenses like those from Sigma, Zeiss, Tamron or even Rokinon.
Lenses with image stabilization will be able to get even more out of this because of their moving elements.
Quite obviously though, this will best cater to the higher end professional that needs the 5Ds and 5Ds R.