Panorama Shift Adapter (PSA) from Zoerk (Zork) on DSLR Nikon D800E – my 80 Mpixel Digital View Camera!
Picture above shows a Nikon D800E equipped with Phottix GPS and wireless RF trigger. The back of the camera is equipped with a Hoodman loupe to be able to critically focus using live view on LCD screen. The lens used is a Mamiya 645 Manual Focus A 150mm f/2.8. It is mounted on the camera via a PSA (Panorama Shift Adapter) from the company Zoerk (Zork) custom made to accommodate Mamiya 645 lenses on Nikon F body. The adapter has a tripod mount and can accommodate a L bracket shown here. The whole assembly is mounted via a Novoflex plate (QPL2 in blue color) on an Arca-Swiss compatible tripod head. I used here a clone of the Arca Swiss Cube for maximum flexibility and accuracy of positioning. In the picture above the lens is shifted horizontally to the left of the camera of approximately 10mm. This assembly is no longer a point & click camera but the digital equivalent of the old view camera, designed to meet or exceed the largest Digital medium format output.
The purpose of using a Mamiya lens on Nikon FF body is not just the latest fad to mount third party lenses on a Nikon body. Mamiya 645 lenses are excellent medium format lenses which have a diameter much superior to the 135 format lenses. It allows to take several photos shifted within the diameter of the lens optics. This is made possible because the 75mm diagonal of a 645 medium format lens gives 32mm of additional space (shift) compared to the 43mm diagonal of a 35mm format camera sensor. This is why we can take 3 photos shifted (one with no shit, one shifted left, and one shifted right) and still be within the diameter of the medium format lens. Using this technique the stitching is quasi perfect with no need to crop due to loss of coverage in the upper or lower section of the image, usually created by a a curvy horizon when panning/rotating with a non perfect leveling.
The resulting image that can be produced with this setup is the equivalent of a 80 Mpixel camera depending on the orientation of the D800E sensor vs the direction of shift! Superior resolution, higher ISO and less noise than all the current Digital medium format cameras sold $20000 and more! Yes, it is possible to do it with an investment inferior to $4000 if you count the purchase cost of the D800E. I will concede that the Mamiya 645 lenses, although excellent, will not quite match the performance of the Leica S lenses. Note however that a Leica S lens is usually > $6000 vs a used Mamiya 645 lens (55mm, 80mm) which can be found on ebay for $300 or less!
The German made Zoerk (Zork) adapter is unique as the Mamiya lens is fixed during the shifting: it is the body which moves behind the lens! Unlike most Panorama adapters allowing the rotation through a difficult to find nodal point , the Zork adaper eliminates any parallax issue since the lens is fixed vs the subject. This is particularly useful when you have a near and remote subject aligned with the camera: any rotation outside the nodal point will ruin the alignment and makes the stitching impossible. Therefore the Zork design results in a superior accuracy of the stitching of the photos where technically 2-3 pixels overlap is enough for a perfect stitch. Rotation based Panorama requires usually min 20% overlap to account for distortion/parallax issues, and the final image needs cropping due to curvature movement of the rotation if tripod head is not perfectly leveled.
Another huge benefit of the Zork adapter: it shifts horizontally 20mm with camera sensor in landscape mode. One limitation in vertical shift: the prism/flash housing of the D800 or D800E limits the vertical shift with sensor in landscape position (approx 14mm). It is better than the max shift of a Nikkor PC-E lens (approx 11 mm). With the camera in landscape mode and a vertical shift (up and down) or with the camera in portrait mode and a horizontal shift (left/right) you achieve the biggest file enlargement. With a Nikon PC-E lens a maximum 11mm shift will give you a 92% increase of the photo. With the Zork adapter a full 20mm shift (possible on Canon DLSR and Nikon pro bodies without built-in flash) will provide a 167% enlargement (yes 2.7 the original pixel size!). It means that a 36Mpixel camera like the D800 will provide a 96Mpixel file with the Zork adapter fully shifted. On Nikon bodies with built in flash like the D700 or D800 however the full shift of 20mm is not possible as the flash housing in on the path of the shift. It seems that the shift is limited to 14mm which provides an enlargement of 117% (x2.2 Mpixel increase).
For Panorama shots where the camera orientation must be the same as the direction of the shift (landscape/Horizontal shift or portrait/Vertical shift) the aspect ratio is spectacular but the Mpixel increase is less:
– On a traditional Nikon PC-E lens with 11mm shift, the Mpixel increase is 61% with aspect ratio of 2.4:1
– with the zork adapter using full 20mm shift (possible on all Canon and Nikon DSLR even with the D700/D800), the Mpixel increase is 111% with aspect ratio of 3:1! more information is available at the following link:
www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/tilt-shift-lenses1.htm
Tilt movement is not possible with this adapter and in general with Mamiya 645 lenses tilt can be achieved but you lose the ability to focus at infinity as the registration distance between the rear of the lens and the sensor would be too long with the additional tilt movement.
Although a sturdy design that reflects German engineering, the finish (look) of the adapter looks as a hand made prototype. The demand is not high enough in the market to mass produce this custom made adapter (the model I purchased use only Mamiya 645 MF lenses but the manufacturer can sell you one adapte for Pentax 6×7 or Hasselblad lenses to be mounted on Nikon or Canon bodies).
Cost $750 including the L bracket that allows the adapter to be mounted with flexibility in any position on a tripod head.
more information can be found on the manufacturer website:
www.zoerk.com/pages/p_psa.htm
I have put a lot of effort to research and understand the Tilt and Shift world which was new to me, and although there are a few books on view cameras, T&S lenses and the Scheimpflug principle, I could not find any practical information on using T&S adapters like Mirex and Zork on Digital cameras, using large diameter Medium Format lenses. Forums seem to provide some partial information with little experience with Nikon DSLR which are less friendly to shifting in the direction of the built-in flash. So I decided to gather all the information I have learned and summarize it in this single post, which you can bookmark or save as a favorite for future reference.
An example of a photo taken with this set-up with explanations how to use Photoshop for Panorama stitching and focus stacking is given in the comments area of this link:
www.flickr.com/photos/episa/8603934110/in/photostream
Final question you may ask and which I already asked myself since I own the Nikkor Micro PC-E 45/2.8: why not use a simple dedicated Tilt and shift lens from Nikon?
It turns out that using a dedicated Nikon PC-E lens is not any easier and still requires to manually focus and fix the exposure manually. A the same time it costs $2000 to get a single T&S lens. With the set-up described in this posting the investment is limited to the adapter ($750) and the Mamiya lens ($300 on ebay for each focal length like 55mm f/2.8N, 80mm f/2.8N, A 150mm f/2.8). Investing in a Nikon PC-E lens makes sense if you use the tilting function for creative effect or as a landscape photographer. But I would argue that using Focus stacking you can achieve an ever better effect than with a Tilt lens if your goal is to achieve maximum depth of field in a landscape or in a macro shot. The real advantage of the PC-E lens remains when you need to reduce the depth of field and create special effects (like miniature rendering, or tilted plane of focus). This becomes a very narrow application mostly for professional photographers who need to sell a unique look in their pictures.
I hope that you found this compilation of data instructive, even eye opening. Let me know if you appreciate the sharing.
Posted by episa on 2013-03-30 21:53:11
Tagged: , Cube , Gitzo , Hoodman loupe , Nikon D800E , Panoramic Shift Adapter , Tripod , Zork , Mamiya 645 A 150mm f/2.8 , Zoerk , review , Tilt shift , Panorama , Shift , Adapter , shifting , Digital view Camera , High resolution , PSA , Phottix , GPS , Novoflex plate QPL2 , Novoflex , Arca-Swiss , Mamiya , Medium Format , 150mm , Vertical Shift , portrait mode , Manual Focus , German design , episa , Camera , View camera , Single-lens reflex camera , Photography , PhotographicPro Shift Adaptor , perspective control , Horizontal shift , dedicated shift lens , lens mount adaptors , lens movements , stiching , film diagonal , fine shift movements , 35mm format , shift mechanism , specific adaptor , specialized perspective control , cameras , image circle , images
