TTArtisan 17mm f/4 Solves Tilt-Shift Woes for Mirrorless Photographers
There is a real lack of native tilt-shift lenses across all mirrorless camera systems. TTArtisan’s newest lens aims to fill the void. The TTArtisan Tilt-Shift 17mm f/4 ASPH. is coming first to Sony E and Fujifilm GFX formats, but will also arrive on Canon RF, L-Mount, and Nikon Z. Best yet, it won’t break the bank.
TTArtisan’s ultra-wide angle tilt-shift lens offers ±8° of tilt and ±8mm of shift. The ability to tilt offers direct control over the lens’s depth of field, enabling very expansive depth of field or, alternatively, very narrow focus for a “miniature” effect.
As for shift, this can be used to move the lens in parallel to the image sensor, enabling photographers, especially architectural ones, to prevent tall buildings from looking distorted. When using a traditional lens, photographers must often angle their camera up to capture certain elements in the frame. By shifting a tilt-shift lens, photographers can avoid perspective distortion while still capturing more of a desired scene.
“Regular wide-angle lenses often cause perspective distortion in architectural shots,” TTArtisan explains. “With the ±8mm shift capability of an ultra-wide tilt-shift lens, the perspective distortion can be easily corrected, keeping architectural lines straight and vertical.”
The lens can be rotated 360° and includes 15° click stops.
The image circle of TTArtisan’s new 17mm f/4 Tilt-Shift lens is 64mm, meaning that it can easily cover a full-frame image sensor, but also the Fujifilm GFX medium-format image sensor. This makes it a very flexible tilt-shift lens that will be available to a wide range of photographers. On the Fujifilm GFX, the 17mm f/4 lens is equivalent to a 13.4mm ultra-wide prime.
The tilt-shift lens includes a 10-bladed aperture and features 17 elements arranged across 11 groups. Of these, there are two aspherical lens elements.
From a design perspective, the lens features a metal barrel, a clicked aperture ring, and dedicated lens hood. Unsurprisingly, the TTArtisan 17mm f/4 Tilt-Shift is a manual focus lens, and it includes imperial and metric focus distance markings on its ridged focus ring. The minimum focusing distance is just 0.3 meters (0.98 feet).
By the way, due to the bulbous front element, the lens does not accept filters. The lens weighs around, 1050 grams (2.3 pounds), although the exact weight varies by the selected lens mount.
Pricing and Availability
The TTArtisan Tilt-Shift 17mm f/4 ASPH. has numerous things going for it. It fills a notable void in the market across all full-frame mirrorless camera systems, and even one medium-format one. It offers a distinct photographic experience that is often challenging and expensive to replicate. And, perhaps best of all, the new TTArtisan lens costs just $509.
It is available now for Sony E and Fujifilm GFX mount directly from TTArtisan. The Canon RF, L-Mount, and Nikon Z versions are coming soon. It is also available on Amazon.
Image credits: TTArtisan
