Flutterby™! : Fake Tilt-Shift and KAP 2006-05-08 02:26:31.188913+00

Fake Tilt-Shift and KAP

2006-05-08 02:26:31.188913+00 by ebradway 4 comments

Dan and I spent some time playing with my cameras while he was here and talking about crazy lens systems. This is an example of faking a tilt-shift lens. I think for KAP, using a real tilt-shift lens would be impossible...

I don't think a real tilt-shift lens would be impossible, I think it'd just lower your ratio of good shots. On the other hand... If you set it up so that at your usual angle you had more of the ground in focus...

Might be worth getting ahold of one, going up on the Walnut Street Bridge (or similar place) and seeing if that perspective shift would be worth anything to the applications you're playing with.

I'm playing with some other images right now and trying to tweak the technique. The "band across the middle in-focus" technique leaves something to be desired but I think I can work around it. Vibrant colors in the picture help. I have a 8x10 print in hand and it looks better than on screen. Next, I'm going to see how it scales up on paper.

I'm always very disappointed by the fake tilt-shifting. But if you're looking for a low-cost way to get the effect (which is opposite what tilt-shift lenses is usually used for, i.e. keeping more of the scene in focus), take a look at the lensbaby.

Personally, I wish I had the money (and camera body - my Nikon D-50 doesn't support non-autofocus lenses) to get a pair of Nikon's Perspective Control lenses. The PC Nikkor 28mm and PC- Micro Nikkor 85mm f/2.8 D would be a lot of fun.

I looked at building something like lensbaby but I really don't think I can do this well in hardware. You see, the camera is hanging from a kite line about 100 feet in the air and is far from static. I have to keep my shutter speed below 1/250 to get clear shots. Taking any f-stop hits would make most of the pictures unusable. Further, I'd have to get very good at guess the depth of field I wanted in the image and set the camera accordingly before sending it up.

Maybe when I try to build a full RC system with video downlink, I could add a servo or two for manipulating the lens. Until then, I'll just play with photoshop...