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Tilt-Shift Photography: It’s a Small World After All

Posted by Dan on August 24th, 2007 36 Comments Printer-Friendly

Tilt-shift photography

Image by mcsixth.

One of the most unique types of photography is tilt-shift photography, a style that makes the world look like it’s miniature. Enjoy these fine examples of tilt-shift photography and I’ll explain just how the effect is achieved at the end, along with several ways you can practice tilt-shift photography on your own.



Tilt-shift photography
Image by wvs.

Tilt-shift photography
Image by B Tal.

Tilt-shift photography
Image by Topher Simon.

Tilt-shift photography

Photo by Rawksteadi

This isn’t just some fringe movement - tilt-shift photography has even made its way into the New York Times, with the utterly cool work of photographer Vincent LaForet. Check out this awesome slideshow of his best work.

If you’re curious, here’s how tilt-shift photography works. A tilt-shift lens allows the photographer very exacting control over the depth-of-field in an image, much more than any regular lens could provide. Focus can be restricted to a single, narrow band, with everything else rapidly blurring away. This distorts the appearance and makes the eye think that distances are a lot smaller than they typically are. When applied to a large scene like a city or a museum, everything appears miniature.

Edit:A Reddit user gives this additional explanation for the effect.

It’s because tilting the lens with respect to the film/sensor plane changes the perspective in the image: you can make lines that otherwise would converge, showing perspective, instead remain parallel or even diverge. It’s not just the depth of field that matters to your brain. Hence the photoshop demonstration isn’t all that effective; the perspective of the objects in the image would also have had to change.

How can you achieve tilt-shift photography of your own? Professional tilt-shift lenses by Canon or Nikon cost a ton of money, but the Lensbaby is a more reasonable alternative.





The vast majority of tilt-shift photography on Flickr or other sites is fake. While most of the images here are from the camera itself, tilt-shift photography is easy to replicate in Photoshop (the first image, as some have highlighted, is a replica). Here’s a tutorial on how to do it.






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Comments

  • H said:

    what a quality

    -August 24th, 2007 at 9:54 am
  • JNESS said:

    Awesome photos!Very impressive technique.

    -August 24th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
  • BLOGMYWAY.org said:

    Amazing way to snap a picture. Can this be done with just Gimp or Photoshop with all regular pictures/images/photos?

    -August 24th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
  • Andy Dremeaux said:

    The reddit comment you have provided is incorrect. A tilt-shift lens generally has two different “features” — 3 if made by Canon — being tilt, shift, and rotation. The tilt is what provides the depth of field control as shown in your images. It makes zero change in perspective. It is the shift function (which physically moves the “top half” of the lens up/down relative to the rest and the body) which provides perspective correction. The shift function will not affect DOF. Both can be used in conjunction with each other, but that is not required, and thus you can easily take images as above without affecting perspective.

    The rotation feature on Canon TS-E lenses is to merely change rotate the lens and thus change the various affected planes from the tilt and shift functionality.

    -August 24th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
  • Andy Dremeaux said:

    Oh and, here’s some reference:

    http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Canon-TS-E-45mm-f-2.8-Tilt-Shift-Lens-Review.aspx

    -August 24th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
  • Mike said:

    Tilt-shift photography is nothing new. It is built in to the mechanics of large format cameras. 35mm and Medium format tilt-shift lenses have been available for years but with the advent of the affordable digital SLR and photo sites like Flickr, more of these images are being made and shared publicly. Previously these lenses were used almost exclusively by architectural photographers to correct keystone distortion in photographs of buildings or by still life photographers.
    This type of photography is not unique and has been avoided, much like drastically toned images, because it is a gimmicky way to make any subject seem interesting. Applying aggressive Photoshop filters falls into the same category.
    Artists like Miklos Gaal and David Levinthal have been using this technique in fine art for years.
    On a technical note for all of you who are dying to go make images that look like these: Lensbabies may be able to produce a similar look too actual tilt-shift photography, but will not really look the same and the cheapest tilt-shift lenses for a 35mm SLR start above $1,000.

    -August 26th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
  • stuart said:

    This sort of technique is also easily attained with photoshop for those who don’t want to buy the lens to get the effect.

    -August 27th, 2007 at 2:50 am
  • avartist said:

    Very interesting!!

    -August 28th, 2007 at 10:39 am
  • Steve said:

    Very nice. First time I’ve seen anything like this. Good work

    -August 29th, 2007 at 6:07 am
  • Icarus said:

    Something different in the world of photography : Nice one :-)

    -November 1st, 2007 at 7:54 am
  • PhotographyAddict said:

    Wow! Nice shots! Thanks a lot for this. I’ve always been into photography but I wanted some help on ideas and this gave me some! :D

    -January 30th, 2008 at 3:26 am
  • Dave Nofmeister said:

    My, what incredible detail!

    I couldn’t do that in a million years, that would be just too tedious to me. What a wonderful tallent!

    -February 19th, 2008 at 2:36 pm

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