Many of you know I shoot with Sony cameras (although stay tuned because there’s a new one in the bag that’s NOT a Sony). One of the advantages of using a mirrorless camera is the flange distance (the distance from the lens mount to the sensor) is much shorter than with a DSLR camera, simply because there’s no mirror between the lens and the sensor. This means that it’s very easy to adapt DSLR lenses by other manufacturers to mirrorless cameras. Case in point: my assortment of Canon tilt-shift lenses. Tilt-shifts are wonderful and let me have some unique control over the perspectives in my photos.
I’ve posted about tilt-shift lenses before and even put together a YouTube video on how tilt-shift lenses work:
I recently picked up a new tilt-shift lens: the Canon 50mm TS-E Macro. These lenses are not cheap and have a very specific use case. I needed the 50mm for some of my architecture photography work but it’s definitely useful for the blog as well! This morning I went out to one of my favorite spots in Dallas, the Sylvan Avenue Bridge. With the right lens you can get a great perspective of the Dallas skyline, especially at sunrise, when the sky will create a very nice silhouette on the increasingly iconic Dallas skyline.
I had my Sony a7rIII with me as well as the Sigma MC-11 adapter, which was necessary to adapt the Canon lens to the Sony. I set up about 45 minutes before sunrise and shot for about an hour and ended up with a great image! I liked it so much I thought I’d post it as this week’s picture of the week!
For the photographers: This is a blend of a few different exposures. The tripod was in the same place the entire time but I used one base exposure (mainly for the sky and buildings) and then brought in the building lights from an earlier exposure and the color in the river from another exposure. It was a relatively easy blend but took some time to get everything right from a color perspective. As always, please let me know if you have any questions about my post-processing in the comments below!
