jcolwell
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Steven Campbel wrote:
I just picked up a 24 TSE II the weekend. Haven't had much time to try it but I'm looking forward to the process. The shots here are unreal. I have a quaestion to the poster who posted the picture of the old pick up, "Chuck the Truck". I like to shoot old vehicles and usually use my 35L 1.4. What advantage or feature of a tilt shift was used for this shot, if any? Do tilt shifts have much use for automotive shots outside of using one as a straight prime?
Hi Steven,
I don't often shoot old trucks, but I often use TS lenses. It's important to appreciate exactly what the tilt and shift movements do for you, both independently and when used together.
Basically, tilt lets you control the angle of the "plane of focus". Without tilt, the plane of focus is parallel to the sensor, and orthogonal to (at right angles to) the lens axis (i.e. where the lens is pointed). So, if you want to take a photo with the near ground and far field all on focus (classic scenic photo), then you normally stop way down, to get as much DOF as possible. If you stop down too far, diffraction effects reduce resolution (which may not matter much, unless you want a large image). If you place the camera near the ground, even great DOF often won't get it all in focus. OTOH, if you tilt the lens "nose down", then the plane of focus tilts down towards the horizontal. This makes it possible to get the plane of focus aligned with the 'ground', and so everything can be in sharp focus, even at relatively wide apertures. In this example, the areas "above" the tilted plane of focus will be out of focus; if it's sky, no worries. You can also tilt sideways to get the plane of focus to lean in that direction, which might be useful, for example, to get the entire side of an antique auto in sharp focus, in a photo taken at an oblique angle from near the front of the vehicle, while also throwing the near and middle ground to "the side of" the plane of focus, out of focus.
Basically, shift lets you control perspective and in particular reduce or exaggerate "perspective distortion". When the lens axis is horizontal, vertical lines in the subject field remain vertical, except for effects like lens distortion. For example, the sides of buildings go straight up and down. If you point the lens upwards, you induce perspective distortion whcih causes vertical lines to converge, and so the top of the building looks really small. Of course, there is a "vanishing point" in this type of scene, but the perspective distortion of an up-tilted lens is much greater than your perception when looking at the same scene. Similarly, if you point the lens down, the vertical lines above the camera diverge, and so the top of the building (or rock formation) appears much bigger than "in reality". The same perspective distortion effects are present for sideways movements ("shift"), as for vertical movements ("rise/fall").
Another common use for shift is to take shifted panorama photos. For example, you can "stitch" three images together which are taken (i) shifted-left, (ii) centred, and (iii) shifted right, with a useful amount of overlap between the images. Or, using rise and fall, as shown in Nick's example, above.
Jim
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