Canon TS-E 17mm f/4L

If you aren’t sure what this is, you don’t want it.

A very exciting lens, the 17mm TS-E is the widest tilt-shift lens made by anyone. It offers a huge 104 degree field of view without tilting, has a floating and rear element focusing system, and both aspherical and UD glass to help maintain minimal chromatic aberration.

It also has a completely new tilt and shift system that lets you tilt AND shift in any plane, even the same plane. The lens provides up to 12mm of shift and 6.5 degrees of tilt. A very exciting (and very expensive) piece of glass.

NOTE: This lens has a very large, protruding front element and NO LENS HOOD – not as in we don’t have one, as in Canon doesn’t make one. This is NOT a lens you want to take into rough conditions unless you like buying $450 front elements.

Roger’s Take: Amazingly sharp, amazingly wide, absolutely no chromatic abberation, exceedingly well built. The new Canon TS-Es are as good as anything available in the genre. And you can tilt, shift, and change the planes of each relative to each other. If you have tilt-shift experience this lets you do remarkable things. If your tilt-shift challanged (this would be me) you can still do remarkable things. Once. Then you can spend the next two hours figuring out how you did that.

But to be honest, both the 24 f3.5 and 17 f4 TS-E lenses are so sharp I sometimes take them in place of another prime to shoot as regular lenses – they’re just that good. And then you can do the tilt-shifty thingamabob and get some really amazing depth of field, slam home a quick panorama, straighten up tall buildings, or just get a very cool effect.