Tilt Shift lens question.

[torrinworX]

Hi there!

I had a question about tilt shift lenses.
I looked at buying one off of kijiji and they where a bit pricy, I really like the types of photos you can take with them, making big things look like micro models. Is there any way I could get the same affect with another cheaper lens or just some camera tricks, even something in photoshop would be great!

 

[Dave442]

You don't need a tilt-shift to do the miniature effect. You don't even need photoshop, but you need to be able to blur the areas above and below the main subject area - the idea is you make the image look like it was taken with a macro lens having a very shallow depth of field. Best is to be above looking down at an angle to the subject - something like some earth moving equipment, an airplane, a set of buildings across the center of the image so you can then blur the areas above and below.

 

[benhasajeep]

I don't own a Lensbaby but have heard of people using them for this. Here is a link I found in a search under -miniature look using lensbaby. Rokinon makes a tilt shift at halfthe cost of the big brands. Not sure of its quality. Lensbaby is less than the Rokinon. I have a Nikon 24mm pc-e tilt/shift but have not tried the miniature look with it.

Photography Tips For Photographers and Posing Guides, Photography Marketing Templates, Contracts and Forms, Photoshop Actions, Lightroom Presets, Tutorials, Business, Online Photography School | www.bp4ublog.com – How to Achieve the Miniature Look with a Lensbaby

 

[Derrel]

Look into the Zork tilt/shift adapter. Or other ones like it, from Arax, etc.

OR--consider some older, manual focusing-era 35mm SLR lenses,like the T/S lenses Nikon made in the 1970's. Fairly affordable.

 

[petrochemist]

Tilt shift lenses are fun but they're definitely not cheap!

There is a website that produces the miniature effect from your photos, you just determine where & how drastically the blur sets in... It's not quite the same as tilting & IMO not as much fun as doing it in camera.

Here's an example from that:
Harwich harbour by Mike Kanssen, on Flickr

Software can give the miniature effect (reduced DOF) but can't do what a proper tilt lens can do to increase DOF in a plane not parallel to the sensor. For this you need to tilt the lens, options include:

Getting a tiltable adapter for SLR lenses on mirrorless bodies - I got my first MFT body specifically with this in mind (body & adapter were around 1/5 the price of a tilt lens).
Here's a (rather poor) shot with that:
Witby Footpath tilted by Mike Kanssen, on Flickr

Making your own 'plunger cam' rig, basically using something like a sink plunger to mount a lens in a flexible fashion. I used a steering gaiter with an enlarger lens. there are many on-line instructions on how to do this in various degrees of complexity.
An attempt at keeping the ground in focus:
freelensing portrait by Mike Kanssen, on Flickr

And my DIY rig (before I added the bayonet mount):
DIY tilt/shift 3 by Mike Kanssen, on Flickr

Get a large format camera - nearly all are designed to give the movements of a T/S lens.

 

[torrinworX]

You don't need a tilt-shift to do the miniature effect. You don't even need photoshop, but you need to be able to blur the areas above and below the main subject area - the idea is you make the image look like it was taken with a macro lens having a very shallow depth of field. Best is to be above looking down at an angle to the subject - something like some earth moving equipment, an airplane, a set of buildings across the center of the image so you can then blur the areas above and below.

Thats great thanks! I had no idea that you could use a macro lens to get the same affect, they are a lot cheaper than a tilt shift. I might look to get a macro lens.

 

[torrinworX]

Look into the Zork tilt/shift adapter. Or other ones like it, from Arax, etc.

OR--consider some older, manual focusing-era 35mm SLR lenses,like the T/S lenses Nikon made in the 1970's. Fairly affordable.

thank you! I will try looking to get a tilt adapter for my canon.

 

[waday]

There is a website that produces the miniature effect from your photos,

You can also do the same yourself!

While not a perfect example, a few months ago I was playing around with gradients in Lightroom and came up with the below image.

 

[FotosbyMike]

T/S lens are not cheap because of the technology/engineering/physics involved to make. Another reason is for the actual use of them it is a specialty lens not really designed to make things look miniature it is just a feature.

These lenses are really meant to fix/correct perspective due to shooting on a flat sensor, things it helps to fix are interior straight lines, (verticals, and horizontals), architectural, so buildings are not falling backwards. Properly stitching wide angle images with little to no distortion. Other users are for shooting product/food photography where your subject is at an angle to the camera and you are restricted to a f/stop but you need more of the product in focus..etc.

In conclusion you can't look at it T/S lenses as making things look small if so not sure it is a good investment, but if you want to lens that can shoot interior/architectural, product, food, people, landscape extremely well, spend the money and get you one. The Rokinon T/S gets really good reviews from a well known architectural photographer so it would be a good pick to save some money, but also looked for used.

 

[Dave442]

You don't need a tilt-shift to do the miniature effect. You don't even need photoshop, but you need to be able to blur the areas above and below the main subject area - the idea is you make the image look like it was taken with a macro lens having a very shallow depth of field. Best is to be above looking down at an angle to the subject - something like some earth moving equipment, an airplane, a set of buildings across the center of the image so you can then blur the areas above and below.

Thats great thanks! I had no idea that you could use a macro lens to get the same affect, they are a lot cheaper than a tilt shift. I might look to get a macro lens.

You can use any lens, the idea is that you are creating a look that is typical of a macro lens - a very shallow depth of field. What I do is to make a panorama image so you can use a slightly longer focal length lens with a large aperture (small f-number) and then stitch the images together into a panorama. This gives a shallow depth of field while allowing you to include the subject and enough area around it so that it can look small in its surroundings. You still have to add additional blur in photoshop to the top and bottom of the image.

 

[cgw]

Look into the Zork tilt/shift adapter. Or other ones like it, from Arax, etc.

OR--consider some older, manual focusing-era 35mm SLR lenses,like the T/S lenses Nikon made in the 1970's. Fairly affordable.

Thought the old Nikkor PCs were shift-only. My old 35/2.8 is. There's also the early Lensbaby products.