Borbin the 🐱

A Tilt lens changes the focal plane, and this is impossible to do with transforms in Software¹. Hardware is required.
Getting a Tilt lens for Nikon Z leaves you with only 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 has not released any Tilt-Shift lenses for Z yet, so you are currently left with only:

• 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 an F-to-Z Tilt adapter and your favorite F-mount lens (the image circle of a Tilt-Shift lens is larger, but here it is used with a DX sensor, so this is an advantage; I 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 the item as shipping within 1 business day, but as I learned from customer service, it is first shipped from somewhere in China to another warehouse, and then from there to the customer. This translates to a 2-3 week shipping time.

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:

It feels solid and high quality. Tilting is smooth and has enough friction to hold a lens even without using the lock.

The adapter has a max Tilt of 12° and can be rotated 360° with 30° click stops. The smaller plunger on the right side unlocks the click stops during rotation.

For the test, a Voigtländer 58mm f/1.4 SL lens was 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 Tilt-Shift lenses is of little interest, as the projection is only a geometric transform in post-processing. The panorama tools easily take care of this with vertical control points (t2). You can never align the lens that perfectly.

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 do not 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 360°×180° panoramic image on a sunny day.

Update of the Update:

I contacted 7artisans through both their main site and store but received no response.

The issue was resolved by switching to a TTArtisan 7.5mm f/2.0, which matches the sharpness of my 7artisans copy even at f/2.0. The support ring measures a perfect 54.90 mm in diameter and mounts smoothly.

With that, my chapter with 7artisans ends here.

The Squirrel accepted the challenge.