Borbin the 🐱

A tilt lens change the focal plane, and this is impossible to do with transforms in Software¹. Hardware required.
To get a Tilt lens for Nikon Z leaves you only to a few choices.

Use Nikon F mount Tilt(-Shift) lenses with the FTZ adapter:

• Nikon PC NIKKOR 19mm f/4E ED Tilt-Shift Lens $3,396
• Nikon PC-E NIKKOR 24mm f/3.5D ED Tilt-Shift Lens $2,196
• Nikon PC-E Micro-NIKKOR 45mm f/2.8D ED Tilt-Shift Lens $2,046
• Nikon PC-E Micro-NIKKOR 85mm f/2.8D Tilt-Shift Lens $1,976
• Samyang 24mm f/3.5 ED AS UMC Tilt-Shift Lens $669

Nikon hasn't released any Tilt(-Shift) lenses for Z yet, so this leaves you currently only to:

• TTArtisan Tilt 50mm f/1.4 Lens $199
• TTArtisan 100mm f/2.8 Tilt-Shift Macro Lens $389

The 50mm is not the best quality with its standard double gauss design, and who needs a 100mm Tilt lens?

The idea is to use a Tilt adapter F to Z mount, and use your favorite F mount lens (image circle of a Tilt-Shift lens is larger, but here it is used along with a DX sensor, so this will be an advantage; cannot check for FX).
The popular NYC store does not have such an adapter, but the Kipon company store has one: Tilt Adapter for Nikon F Mount Lens on Nikon Z Mirrorless Camera.
The site lists items to be shipped within 1 business day, but as I have learned from the customer service, the item is shipped from somewhere in China first to another warehouse, and then from there to the customer. This translates to a 2-3 week shipping.

The alternative is to use a Sony E to Z mount tilt adapter, or a Fujifilm X to Z mount tilt adapter with an additional lens adapter as the 16mm flange distance of the Z mount is a bit shorter than the Sony (18mm) or Fujifilm (17.7mm) one².

The Kipon F to Z mount tilt adapter arrived:

Feels solid and high quality. Tilting is smooth and has good friction to hold a lens even without using the locking.

The adapter has a max tilt of 12° and can be rotated 360° with 30° click stops. The smaller plunger on the right side is to unlock the click stops during rotate.

For the test, a Voigtländer 58mm f/1.4 SL lens is used:

It really works.

Shelf without tilt:

Shelf with max tilt:

Shelf from an angle without tilt:

Shelf from an angle with max tilt:

Examples with max tilt:

The shift feature of the Tilt-Shift lenses is of little interest as the projection is only a geometric transform in post op. The panorama tools easily take care of this with vertical control points (t2). You can never align the lens that perfect.

On August 8-9, 2023, a wild fire destroyed parts of West Maui, including the Lāhainā Banyan Court which I had visited shortly before.

This is how the Lāhainā Banyan Court with its 150-year-old banyan tree and the old Court House looked back then:

Interactive Panorama of the Lāhainā Banyan Court

The 360° Little Planet view of the Lāhainā Banyan Court

Northwest corner of the court with the legendary Captain Jack's.

http://www.photosynthesis.co.nz/nikon/lenses.html is an extensive list of all Nikon Lenses, but as a simple web page also limited to data queries.

I created a PowerShell script to download and convert the html page to a JSON file to allow lens data queries.

See https://github.com/jurgen178/NikonLenses for the PowerShell script.

(Permission granted from photosynthesis.co.nz)

Example queries:

# Filter the result for specific lens data.

# Get all 6/2.8 lenses with AI.
$ai = $allLensData.Where({ $_.Type.Contains("Ai") -and $_.Lens -eq "6/2.8" })

# Get all AI-S 6/2.8 lenses.
$ais = $allLensData.Where({ $_.Type -eq "Ai-S" -and $_.Lens -eq "6/2.8" })

# Get all 16mm Fisheye lenses.
$16mmFisheye = $allLensData.Where({ $_.Group -eq "Fisheye" -and $_.Lens.StartsWith("16/") })

# Get all AF lenses out of the 16mm Fisheye lenses.
$AF16mmFisheye = $16mmFisheye.Where({ $_.Type -match "AF" })

# Get all 24-85 lenses.
$24_85 = $allLensData.Where({ $_.Lens.StartsWith("24-85/") })

# Get all light lenses <200g.
$lightLenses = $allLensData.Where({ $_.Weight.Length -gt 0 -and [int](($_.Weight -replace '^(\d+).*$', '$1')) -lt 200 })

# Get all heavy lenses >2000g.
$heavyLenses = $allLensData.Where({ [int](($_.Weight -replace '^(\d+).*$', '$1')) -gt 2000 })

# Get the first 5 heaviest lenses.
$first5heavyLenses = $heavyLenses.GetEnumerator() | Sort-Object { [int]($_.Weight) } -Descending | Select-Object -First 5

# 1200-1700/5.6-8 IF-ED Ai-P (16000g)
# 1000/6.3 Reflex F (9900g)
# 50cm/5 T·C S, M39 (8500g)
# 360-1200/11 ED Ai-S (8250g)
# 2000/11 Reflex A,C (7500g)
foreach ($lens in $first5heavyLenses) {
    "$($lens.Lens) $($lens.Type) ($($lens.Weight)g)"
}

# Get all constant f/2.8 aperture lenses.
$aperture_2_8 = $allLensData.Where({ $_.Lens -match "/2.8(\s|$)" })

# Get all Z mount VR lenses.
$vr = $allLensData.Where({ $_.Type.Contains("Z") -and $_.Lens.Contains("VR") })

# Get all DX lenses out of the Z mount VR lenses.
$vrdx = $vr.Where({ $_.Type -eq "Z DX" })

# Print result.
# 12-28/3.5-5.6 PZ VR Z DX
# 16-50/3.5-6.3 VR Z DX
# 18-140/3.5-6.3 VR Z DX
# 50-250/4.5-6.3 VR Z DX
foreach ($lens in $vrdx) {
    "$($lens.Lens) $($lens.Type)"
}

Or print all lens data.

# Print all lens data by group.
foreach ($lensGroup in $lenses.PsObject.Properties) {
    "$($lensGroup.Name) ($($lensGroup.Value.count))"

    $lensGroup.Name
    foreach ($lens in $lensGroup.Value) {
        $lens
    }
}

The support ring of the 7Artisans Fisheye for Nikon Z mount is 55.04mm, while the Nikon Z mount itself is 55mm.
Tight fit. You can barely screw that thing on.

The Nikkor 16-50mm is 54.91mm.

Even a cheap F to Z mount adapter is within tolerances.

To fix this, first unscrew the lens mount.

The support ring needed to be reduced to 54.60mm. The mount is not perfectly round and a first trial to 54.80mm was still too tight.
Chinese tolerances of the overall mount, I guess.

If you don't have access to a Lathe, you can use a fine file and make several rounds to take off the 0.2mm. Take your time and use tape to protect the ring.
Note: The mount is positioned with the red dot next to the Aperture print.

Done, Lens meets Camera.
Now it fits mirrorless.

Update:

The lens is sharp only on one side.
Crop from the top part of the test picture. This is with f/5.6:

Camera rotated 180°:

Stopping down to f/8 improves things and of course its getting better with f/16.
Pay for a f/2.8 lens and use it like a pinhole camera.

Another creative feature is the remarkable colored lens flare when you point towards the sun with f/8-f/16. You get that for free when doing a 360x180° panoramic image on a sunny day.

Update of the Update:

I have contacted 7artisans (both the main site and the store), but I have not received any response.

I have solved the problem by switching to a TTArtisan 7.5mm f/2.0. It matches the sharpness of my copy of the 7artisans already at f/2.0.
The diameter of the support ring is 54.90mm and mounts smoothly.
They even fixed the spelling error of the name on the lens in the latest production run.
This concludes my business with 7artisans.

The Squirrel accepted the challenge.

🌞 + 😋