Photography with Tilt and Shift Lenses: Art and Techniques by Keith Cooper

Author:Keith Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crowood Press Ltd

Chapter 4

Tilting the Lens

AN APPROACH TO USING TILT

* * *

In explaining the operation of lenses with tilt/shift movements to photographers new to the idea, shifting the lens is a concept that most grasp quite rapidly. Levelling a camera, pointing it at a building and showing the effect of an upwards shift of the lens, via the viewfinder or screen is a clear and simple example. If it is a wide lens then any error in levelling the camera is also easy to see.

At its simplest, tilting a lens attached to your camera tilts the plane of focus of your lens/camera. It is this concept of a plane of focus that can be conceptually more difficult to appreciate. In essence, the plane of focus can be thought of as a virtual sheet of glass positioned at the focus distance in front of your camera. Alternately, think of standing in front of a flat wall with your level camera pointing directly at the wall. You adjust the focus and the whole wall is sharp.

Unfortunately, tilting a lens about some arbitrary axis is in many ways a more subtle effect and often difficult to check on the rear screen of a digital camera or viewfinder. The results depend on the degree of tilt of the lens and the focus setting you are using. With shift there is a simple movement of the lens and no need to change your focus setting. With tilt, both focus and degree of tilt interact in what can seem an unpredictable manner.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.