Tips and Tricks:
Tilt Shift Photography
Tilt–shift photography is a really interesting form of photography that is catching up some interests now. It involves the use of camera
movements on small and medium-format cameras, and sometimes specifically refers to the use of tilt for selective focus, often for
simulating a miniature scene.
Tilt is used to control the orientation of the plane of focus (PoF), and hence the part of an image that appears sharp. Shift is used to adjust
the position of the subject in the image area without moving the camera back; this is often helpful in avoiding the convergence of parallel
lines when photographing tall buildings.
In photography, a perspective control lens allows the photographer to control the appearance of perspective
in the image; the lens can be moved parallel to the film, the terms PC and TS are also used by some
manufacturers to refer to this type of lens.
Short-focus perspective-control (PC) lenses (i.e., 17 mm through 35
mm) are used mostly in architectural photography. Longer focal lengths
may also be used in other applications such as landscape, product, and
closeup photography.
The first PC lens manufactured for an SLR camera in any format was
Nikon’s 1961 f/3.5 35 mm PC-Nikkor. Other manufacturers, including
Olympus, Pentax, Schneider Kreuznach (produced as well for Leica),
and Minolta, made their own versions of PC lenses. Olympus produced
35 mm and 24 mm shift lenses. Canon currently offers 17 mm, 24 mm, 45 mm, and 90 mm tilt/shift
lenses, whereas Nikon currently offers 19 mm, 24 mm, 45 mm, and 85 mm PC lenses with tilt and
shift capability.
Shape control
With a PC lens, the camera’s back can be kept parallel to the subject while the lens is moved to achieve the desired positioning of the
subject in the image area.
Aperture control
Most SLR cameras provide automatic aperture control, which allows viewing and metering at the lens’s maximum aperture, stops the lens
down to the working aperture during exposure, and returns the lens to maximum aperture after exposure.
Tilt
Using tilt changes the shape of the depth of field (DoF). When the lens and image planes
are parallel, the DoF extends between parallel planes on either side of the PoF. With tilt or
swing, the DoF is wedge shaped. The DoF is zero at the apex, remains shallow at the edge
of the lens’s field of view, and increases with distance from the camera. The angular DoF
increases with lens f-number, the angular DoF decreases with increasing tilt.
Shift
Shift is a displacement of the lens parallel to the image plane that allows adjusting the
position of the subject in the image area without changing the camera angle; in effect the
camera can be aimed with the shift movement.
Miniature Faking
Selective focus via tilt is often used to simulate a miniature scene, so much that “tilt-and-shift effect” has been used as a general term for
some miniature faking techniques. Basic digital post-processing techniques can give results similar to those achieved with tilt, and afford
greater flexibility and control, such as choosing the region that is sharp and the amount of blur for the unsharp regions. Moreover, these
choices can be made after the photograph is taken. One advanced technique, Smallgantics, is used for motion-pictures; it was first seen
in the 2006 Thom Yorke music video “Harrowdown Hill”, directed by Chel White. Artist Olivo Barbieri is well known for his miniature-
faking skills in the 1990s. Artist Ben Thomas’s series Cityshrinker extended this concept to miniature faking major cities around the
world, one such example is in his first book, Tiny Tokyo: The Big City Made Mini (Chronicle Books, 2014), which depicts Tokyo in
miniature.
Applications
With a perspective control lens, however, the lens may be shifted upwards in
relation to the image area, placing more of the subject within the frame.
Another use of shifting is in taking pictures of a mirror. By moving the camera off
to one side of the mirror and shifting the lens in the opposite direction, an image of
the mirror can be captured without the reflection of the camera or photographer.
-The 1961 35 mm f/3.5 PC-Nikkor lens—the first per-
spective control lens for a 35 mm camera.
Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L IINikon 24 mm lens which tilts (as seen above) and also shifts72 Vol 2
Rishabh Jain
rishabh@chiiz .com
Youngest member and tech guy of the
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