Canon Launches 3 New Tilt-Shift Lenses

2017.08.30

Along with the announcement of the beginner-oriented Canon EOS M100 mirrorrless digital camera, Canon released 4 new lenses aimed at professional users of their Full-Frame DSLRs, including 3 Tilt-Shift Lenses:

The normal Canon TS-E 50mm F/2.8L Macro, shown above.

The medium Canon TS-E 90mm F/2.8L Macro

The short-telephoto Canon TS-E 135mm F/4L Macro

The bright medium Canon EF 85mm F/1.4L IS USM, shown below.

The EF 85mm F/1.4L IS USM is the first stabilized portrait lens for Canon Full-Frame DSLRs. It offers a very bright aperture made of 9 circular-blades and a quick ultra-sonic (USM) ring-type focus motor. This lens is also weatherproof against moisture, rain and dust. The USM motor gives the lens Quick-Shift Autofocus.

All the above Tilt-Shift lens, as always, are Manual-Focus Only lenses. New to the TS-E series is an improved 0.5X magnification which why Canon calls them all Macro, even though they are still 2X away from reach true macro magnification. The new lenses offer all the latest optical optimizations including Ultra-Diffractive (UD) elements, double anti-reflective coatings and Sub-Wavelength-Coating (SWC) or Air-Sphere-Coating (ASC), depending on the model.

The TS-E 90mm F/2.8L Macro, shown above, and the TS-E 134mm F?4L Macro, shown below, have expanded tilt mechanisms which can move either way 10mm, compared to 8.5mm for the TS-E 50mm. A rotation mechanism allows the axis between tilt and shift to be rotated. All new TS-E lenses can shift ±12 at the base. This gives them a considerable amount of flexibility. To prevent accidental movements though, Canon equipped all these lenses with independent locks for Tilt and Shift movements.

The longest Tilt-Shift lens to data is the TS-E 135mm F/4L. It has a maximum F/4 aperture, while all its siblings launched today open to F/2.8. It sill gives a very shallow and flexible depth-of-field consider its relatively long focal-length. All these new TS-E lenses are particularly well-suited for product photography.

Despite all being rather costly professional lenses, none of the TS-E lenses are weatherproof. Canon makes no such lenses and neither does any EF-mount third-party manufacturer. It must be rather difficult to weatherproof such complex lenses and, to be fair, product photography rarely requires a weatherproof lens.

All the new Tilt-Shift lenses are scheduled to ship this November for exactly the same $2199 USD price. The Canon EF 85mm F/4L IS USM is also scheduled for November but for a lower $1599 USD price.

• Lens