What lenses can I use to build a DIY tilt/shift lens for a Nikon DX body?

Question

I've found an awesome description for how to build your own tilt/shift lens (http://www.creativepro.com/article/build-a-tilt-shift-camera-lens-peanuts) that mentions using, for example, a lens for the now obsolete Pentacon 6 format. What other lenses could be used for this purpose? Are there any other concerns than it having to be a lens for a larger format than the target one (DX, in my case)?

Ideally, it would be a lens of great optical quality that you can get hold of cheaply (though I realize that posting this question doesn't really help with that).

Answer

The best lenses to use are those originally created for medium format cameras. This is for two reasons:

-when you tilt or shift a lens, you can end up with part of the resulting photo being black because the lens is not no longer pointed directly at the sensor. With a medium-format lens, you have a lot more play in tilt and shift, because the "image circle" is larger. It allows you to tilt and shift more.

-the lenses in medium format cameras are usually designed to be farther away from the sensor/film than your regular dslr lenses. This means that to get a correctly focused picture with a medium format lens, it needs to be spaced away from the camera. This gives you a bunch of space where you can construct a tilt/shift mechanism.

I would suggest… Mamiya or Pentax 645/67 lenses. They'r readily available (check keh.com) and some aren't too expensive.

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