Opinion: Adding AI to Tilt Shift Could Really Change Things

There have been a whole slew of new tilt-shift lenses finally coming to the market; which have been much needed. Fujifilm makes their own for GFX but all the other brands aren’t making their own. Yet at the same time, I truly think that with all the AI that’s being used in cameras these days, the manufacturers could use it to help with tilt shift lens decisions.

At times when I’m using a tilt shift lens, sometimes I think that I’ve got the scene perfectly corrected. Yet later on and with some space away from the scene, I realize that I haven’t made the correct adjustments. And I think that cameras could do a much better job here. One of the cool things that Leica SL cameras offer is perspective correction, which takes care of this automatically for you no matter what lens you’re using.

But what about if cameras used their in-camera perspective correction and lens corrections to give us assistance with using tilt-shift lenses? They could analyze the scene and give us an outline of what the scene should look like. Alternatively, what if Sony, Canon, or Nikon made a tilt-shift lens that could give you automatic adjustments electronically while still also giving you the option to do it manually?

The screen could show you guidance bars and such to help you with the correct perspective for the scene. It would be great for products, architecture, landscapes, fine art, long exposures, etc. Indeed, some of my favorite lenses are tilt-shifts because they force a photographer to slow down, adjust knobs, set the exposure, manually focus, etc. There isn’t any of this nonsense of being super duper fast. Though if AI in cameras and lenses helped, it would make the whole process easier.

These are the things that I really wish that brands made instead of creating the lenses that everyone else makes. I mean, look at how many 50mm f1.4 lenses there are out there. Do we really need any more? They all have a look to them that you can’t really tell the difference between. So brands have to do more and different things to their lenses for photography. Instead of making everything dual purpose for video and photo, they should be making them dual purpose for photography with character or not.

To lean more into the Japanese idea that their lenses aren’t perfect, adding in AI perspective correction adjustments (with the optics shifting and not with the adjustments to the final image) would also give something a whole lot more perfect to the photographers.

If any company were to do this, it would be Sony or Canon. But neither seem to really have any investment into making tilt-shift lenses with seriousness. The Chinese brands have been making them now for a while though. And I’d love one from the likes of Viltrox, 7Artisans, TTArtisan, or others. Because of the openness of the L-mount alliance, I could probably predicts that that system may get these sorts of options available to them first.