Introduction
At the end of the DSLR/EF-mount era Canon released a bunch of newly designed extremely high quality TS-E lenses. This Canon TS-E 135mm 4.0L Macro is one of them. It is also Canon’s longest Tilt/Shift lens so far. Is this the dream lens for product photography? Let’s find out in this review.
Sample Images
Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.
Contents
Specifications / Version History
This Canon TS-E 135mm 4.0L Macro was one of the last Tilt/Shift lenses released by Canon for the EF-mount and it it also the longest one they made so far. It has the following specifications:
-
- Diameter: 89 mm
- Field of view: 19° (diagonally, unshifted)
- Length: 139 mm
- Weight: 1086g (without hood [42g], without caps)
- Filter Diameter: 82 mm
- Number of Aperture Blades: 9 (rounded)
- Elements/Groups: 11/7
- Close Focusing Distance: 0.49 m
- Maximum Magnification: 1:2
- Mount: Canon EF
This is also a pretty rare lens, probably the TS-E lens with the lowest production count. If you are looking for one, some stores may still have one in the backcorner of their shop, otherwise your best bet is ebay.
buy from ebay.com | ebay.de (affiliate links) for around $2.000
Disclosure
This Canon TS-E 135mm 4.0L Macro was kindly provided by our reader Olaf Leismann for review purposes. Thanks a lot!
Handling / Build Quality
Regarding Tilt and Shift and what those can be used for best have a look at my article Working with Tilt/Shift lenses.
Just like the Canon TS-E 17mm 4.0L, also this 135mm has two points of rotation, allowing for any combination of tilt and shift.
The focus ring runs smooth and without slack but resistance and throw at longer distnaces are too low for a lens like this, where accurately focusing manually is what you will be doing all the time.
While the focus ring travels ~160° from the minimum focus distance (0.5 m) to infinity, most of that covers the closer distances, between 1 m and infinity there are only a few degrees.
For shift you have a locking knob on one side and an adjustment knob on the opposite side. These can be adjusted if you think they are too loose or too tight. The whole lens can be rotated by 180° and has 30° click stops.
Personally, I find Shift more useful in wide angle lenses and Tilt more useful in normal or tele lenses, so you will not find a lot of pictures in the shifted state in this review.
For tilt you have the same two knobs but an additional locking lever if you really want to make sure not to accidentally add some tilt to your images. The tilt part can be rotated by 90° and has one 45° click stop. This is one of the latest generation T/S lenses from Canon and it has the biggest knobs so far.
There is an official hood available for this lens that can also be mounted reversed for transport.
Thanks to the adapters we have these days you can use this lens on pretty much every modern mirrorless system. It is a floating elements design, so make sure to use an adapter that has the correct length in order not to hurt this lens’ image quality.
Vignetting
| Unshifted | Shifted +12mm | |
|---|---|---|
| f/4.0 | 0.7 EV | 1.6 EV |
| f/5.6 | 0.2 EV | 0.6 EV |
| f/8.0 | 0.1 EV | 0.3 EV |
| f/11 | 0.1 EV | 0.3 EV |
These shift lenses have an image cirlce bigger than normal lenses, so in the unshifted state there is hardly any vignetting. In the shifted corners it is noticeable, but only at f/4.0. Already at f/5.6 it is very low here, too.
If you want to correct the uneven vignetting I can recommend using gradients in Lightroom.
It is recommended to have a look at this article first to get an idea how this brightness graph works.
Sharpness
infinity (42mp Sony A7rII)
In terms of optical performance, this last generation of TS-E lenses are some of the finest lenses you can find. Already at f/4.0 they offer outstanding sharpness across the whole frame, including the shifted areas.
This is also a fullframe lens, where it actually makes sense to adapt it to the 44×33 cameras.
In terms of focal length, one of the closest competitors is the Laowa TS 100mm 2.8 Macro, it doesn’t stand a chance in this category though, in the shifted corners this Canon looks better at f/4.0 than the Laowa does at any aperture.
close 0.5 m, 1:2.0 (42mp Sony A7rII)
100% crops from center, A7rII
Unsurprisingly also at closer distances this Canon lens shows a great performance.
Flare resistance
As always evaluating flare is a complex matter since you can get any lens to look bad if you push it hard enough and a slight change of scenario can affect results a lot.
As is often the case with tele lenses, veiling flare is the biggest issue in backlit scenarios.
Stopped down the performance is very similar and also here ghosting isn’t really a problem.
Being a tele lens with big glass elements, this performance was to be expected. For the typical applications of a lens like this, this should not be much of a problem though.
Coma
We have already seen in the sharpness section that this lens is very well corrected even in the shifted areas, so it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that also Coma is corrected very well.
Distortion
With T/S lenses distortion is pretty hard to correct when they are shifted, so I am happy to report this 135mm lens shows no distortion when unshifted and hardly any when fully shifted.
Bokeh
Today all the big manufacturers have a 135mm 1.8 lens in their lineup, so a 135mm 4.0 surely doesn’t sound as exciting here, but this is only until you take the tilt function into account.
With the tilt function you can make alterations to the focal plane and depending on the scene, the shape and position of the subject and the angles between camera and subject you can sometimes increase or decrease the depth of field.
In the scene above, when the lens is tilted up it looks like the depth of field is thinner and when the lens is tilted down it actually looks like the lens has been stopped down by a few stops.
The thing is, you need a lot of practice (some knowledge also helps) to make good use of the tilt function. I have seen some amazing pictures where the tilt has been used to great effect, but many simply look gimmicky, so I think it is an effect that should be used with caution.
I would have also hoped for more/rounder aperture blades, as already stopped down to f/11 those “circles” are pretty edgy.
In close focus scenarios the maximum aperture of f/4.0 is also not exactly a limiting factor when it comes to creating a shallow depth of field. I took most of the samples in this review in a museum through showcase glass and without a tripod.
You can also use this lens for the “miniature” effect often associated with tilt lenses, but here I found shorter lenses (like e.g. the Canon TS-E 45mm 2.8) to give more striking results. So if you are after this effect I would recommend to have a look at the shorter tilt lenses.
Sunstars
Canon used to go for 8 aperture blades with most of their EF lenses, but for some of the later ones they decided to go for 9 aperture blades and that is also the case here. Sunstars are best defined in the f/22 to f/45 range, which surely is diffraction territory. For the typical applications for a lens like this I don’t think it matters a great deal how the sunstars look though. If you want to know more about sunstar rendering of different lenses have a look at this article.
Chromatic aberration
lateral
Sony A7rII | Sigma MC-11 | Canon TS-E 135mm 4.0L Macro | 100% crops from extreme border
Lateral CA are on a low level and easy to correct in post.
longitudinal
These days we have many 135mm lenses with a maximum aperture of f/1.8 that correct bokeh fringing and purple fringing perfectly, so it should not come as much of a surprise that also this Canon TS-E 135mm 4.0L Macro is perfectly corrected. An APO tag would be well deserved here.
Conclusion
good
|
average
|
not good
|
Now all the Tilt/Shift lenses are aimed at professionals and you cannot find a whole lot of information or reviews on them online. I am pretty sure, this Canon TS-E 135mm 4.0L Macro is one of the rarest though, and most people may not even know it exists.
On the one hand this is because of timing, as it is an EF mount lens released at the end of the DSLR era and on the other hand because it is a special purpose workhorse lens for product photography. Of course, its eye-watering price tag didn’t help either.
In terms of optical performance, this is one of the best lenses you can find. Unlike Canon’s earlier TS-E lenses also in the shifted areas the image quality is impeccable. The only things I would have wished for are more (or better rounded) aperture blades and a longer focus throw between 1.0 m and infinity.
I take all my product pictures in the reviews with an old Sigma 150mm 2.8 HSM Macro lens. If this Canon TS-E 135mm 4.0L Macro wasn’t that expensive – or I would earn money with doing product photography – I would surely get one of these, no questions asked.
buy from ebay.com | ebay.de (affiliate links) for around $2.000
Alternatives
Laowa TS 100mm 2.8 1:1 Macro
Going by Martin’s review this Canon lens is noticeably sharper at infinity in the shifted corners and has less vignetting, the Laowa has the benefit of offering a 1:1 magnification and being significantly cheaper.
buy from manufacturer’s shop | amazon.com | amazon.de | ebay.com | ebay.de | B&H (affiliate links) for around $1.249
TTArtisan TS 100mm 2.8 2:1 Macro
Its shift function (only 6 mm) is less useful compared to this Canon or the aforementioned Laowa, but its low price makes it an amazing option to dip your toes into the world of Tilt/Shift lenses. It also focuses even closer, offering a 2:1 (twice life size) magnification.
buy from manufacturer’s shop | amazon.com | amazon.de | ebay.com | ebay.de (affiliate links) for around $419
Caution: the TS version seems to have been discontinued but instead a cheaper non-TS lens with same optics is available, pay attention to get the one you actually want.
Hartblei 120mm 4.0:
This is an old Zeiss medium format lens equipped with Tilt/Shift mechanics. Going by Zeiss’ datasheet it cannot even remotely compete with this Canon’s optical performance.
Sample Images
Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.
Further Reading
- Sony FE lenses: Our comprehensive and independent guide
- Review: Canon EF 85mm 1.2L USM II
- Review: Canon EF 135mm 2.0L USM
- Review: Canon EF 200mm 1.8L USM
- Review: Laowa 15mm 4.0 Macro
- Review: Laowa 90mm 2.8 Macro 2:1
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“…I find Shift more useful in wide angle lenses and Tilt more useful in normal or tele lenses…”
…but if you are doing “tabletop” photography (e.g. plates of food) you will find Shift very useful to make small framing adjustments after you have adjusted Tilt to supply the required zone of sharpness along the tabletop. This is why I was glad to see in the review that Canon finally made the shift and tilt axes freely rotatable respective to each other. During the ~20 years I did plate o’ food photography I used one of the older TS-E lenses, which could be rotated only by removing four small crosspoint screws, turning the shiftable section 90 degrees relative to the tillable section, then reassembling. It’s true that for food photography you didn’t need to change this very often, but on the rare occasions when you did it was annoying to have to run and try to find your screwdriver…
For a cheap alternative, how about just a 120mm f4 macro for Pentax 645 or Mamiya 645 with a tilt/shift adapter. They both go to 1:1 and are know to be sharp. Granted, the adapters have the tilt and shift 90 degrees from one another.
For most of us cheaper alternatives make much more sense. Difference in sharpness (especially when tilted/shifted) would be significant. These results are really fantastic, but indeed, for most of us this lens is a financial overkill.
At least food photography is rarely printed large, but rather used for web, menus etc., billboards (which are printed with low density), I imagine.
But I also imagine that handling this lens is easier that those TS adapters.
I see pros and cons (mainly magnification, size and price) to this lens, but those unaffected by the cons will probably find it perfect for their needs. For the rest of us it’s an interesting rarity, and a fun review to read.
Thanks Bastian!
I once used the Kipon Pro TS adapter along with the Pentax 645 A 120mm Macro (A and FA are optically identical) on the GFX 50s and 100s. It worked great because the adapter was very precisely made (though it cost 550 euros with a discount). With lower-quality adapters, light leaks are not uncommon, and they can significantly affect image quality.
By the way, all Canon TS-E lenses work well with GFX sensors. The 50mm and 90mm are absolute top performers on the large sensor. The 135mm also performs well, but I didn’t quite like the focal length.