Among the desires of any photographer there are certainly the Tilt-Shift opticsthose which, through a movement or inclination on the optical axis, allow very particular effects to be obtained, such as straightening of falling lines ol’inclination of the focusing plane.
If the first function of tilt-shift lenses is very useful in architectural photography, it is above all the properties of tilting lenses that attract a wider range of photographers, due to the possibility, among others, of focusing on two subjects placed at different distances with a single shot or to obtain the particular ‘miniature effect’.
The optics Tilt&Shift They have the defect of being bulky on the one hand and expensive on the other, so they fall within the scope of a small portion of photographers, also given their limited use.
What if it was the sensor that tilted? Canon technicians are thinking about it
Canon seems to want to simplify things and democratize the inclination of the focus plane, moving the function from the optics to the sensor. In recent years we have seen manufacturers use optical sensor stabilization systems in a very creative way, for example by moving the sensor by half a pixel at a time to oversample a single image (and obtain a multiplication of resolution combined with the absence of demosaicing) or (as in the case of Pentax) to track the stars in astrophotography sessions.
In fact, there is a patent in which Canon shows the functioning of a sensor with a ’tilt’ function capable of simply replicating, with any lens, the effects obtainable from a tilting lens. By then expanding the movement on the focusing plane (the one used for stabilization) it would then be possible to mimic the functions of the tilt-shifters.
As always we are talking about a patent and in recent years we have seen many interesting ones that never became reality: this would however be very interesting to see implemented in a real product, but from paper to the creation of a real camera is often an arduous road.
