Century Swing Shift – Tilt Shift Lens System

The Century Swing Shift System is a collection of tilt shift lenses and a bellows system, made by Century Precision Optics/Clairmont. It is designed for demanding cinema and video applications where precise control and fine-tunable adjustments are essential.

With an interface that may be most familiar to shooters of large format view cameras, the bellows can swing, tilt, shift, rise and fall, allowing in-camera effects that are impossible with traditional optics. Control your depth of field by tilting the focal plane, keeping objects at two distances in focus. Capture huge scenes as if they are miniature by narrowing the focus region, regardless of focal length. Alter the shape and apparent perspective of objects, and compensate for perspective distortion. You can even shoot into a mirror without seeing the camera’s reflection.

While a tilt shift lens is sometimes compared to “lens whacking”, the additional control and elimination of light leaks make a tilt shift lens system much more powerful. The nine lenses included with the tilt shift system have expanded image circles to cover the full imaging area even when tilted and shifted. This means that with some settings, they can be used with full frame cameras, although super 35mm and 16mm cameras will be more likely to have edge-to-edge sensor coverage even under the most extreme tilt and shift settings.

The bellows has a PL mount, making it compatible with a huge variety of cameras. The included 19mm or 15mm rod mounts are essential for securing the system to a camera. Each optic mounts to the bellows with a plate and dual thumbscrews.

Our Century Swing Shift rental includes optics from 14mm to 150mm. Each lens has an 85mm front diameter and close focuses to 5 inches or less. Maximum apertures vary from T2.4 to T4.0. When built, the system weighs 3-4 pounds.