Why I use PC lenses when shooting property photography

Architects, designers and builders go to great lengths to make sure that houses are built with perfectly vertical walls. I think it is important that the same effort is made to keep vertical lines straight in the photography too.
PC (perspective control) lenses, or tilt shift lenses as they are also referred to allow the photographer to look up, down, left or right without actually moving the camera.
Sometimes we want to include more of the floor or ceiling space in a shot rather than looking straight forward from where the camera is pointed. With a normal lens this means pointing the camera up or down which causes the vertical lines to converge either at the top of the image when pointing upwards or at the bottom of the image when pointing down and as you would expect it is known as converging verticals.
It may not sound a big deal but it causes the house to look wonky as if it has been built with walls that are falling over, and who wants to purchase a house that isn’t well built!
A PC lens has an extra set of controls besides the aperture and focus ring. These are the ‘movements’ that allow the lens to ‘look’ up, down, left or right without actually moving the camera. And it’s using these movements that enable you to get a photo looking up or down without any wonky walls in the shot
Of course a photo can be corrected in the software using the perspective control in Photoshop or Lightroom but this causes part of the image to be lost when cropping has to be applied to straighten the image.
Another useful feature of PC lenses when shooting property photography is the ability to create panoramic images that take in a larger view without using ultra wide angle lenses that  can be prone to distortion and, in my opinion, change the shape and feel of a room too much causing your potential buyers to turn up and claim “it doesn’t look like it does in the photos!” It’s also helping to manage expectations, we really want the people turning up at your home to have a positive feel about the place, not one where they feel they have been duped by pictures that don’t tell the truth. Using the shift mechanism of the lens I will often take a set of three photos then use Photoshop to stitch them together to create a wider field of view which is often very important when you need to show something like an amazing panoramic view from your decking area.
It’s just one more small technique that will help sell your property.