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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Tilt/Shift online tutorials?
Harrison Shull, Photographer
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Fayetteville, WV | Asheville, NC | | Posted: 9:11 AM on 06.11.09 |
->> I have a TSE45 lens coming on loan from CPS later this month for two weeks of playtime. I have never used one before so I have been scouring the interweb looking for tutorials to get myself up to speed prior to its arrival.
Much of what I dig up via Google searches are either "how to's" to fake the TS look via Photoshop or they are generic tutorials on how to correct distortion for architectural shots.
My specific goal is to create some images of an iconic bridge here that have the minature look that TS images can have. I found this link:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11/16/beautiful-examples-of-tilt-shift.../
that has examples of the look that I am after but gives little info on how someone with no TS experience can quickly get to a point with a TSE lens where they are consistently creating this look.
So I thought I might appeal to the collective SS experience to see if there was anyone out there with a few bookmarked links they could share on the topic. Thanks! |
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Curtis Clegg, Photographer
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Sycamore | IL | USA | Posted: 9:29 AM on 06.11.09 |
->> Do a Google search on the phrase "using a tilt shift lens" and you'll get tons o' good links like the one below, and some links to video tutorials.
This page has a lot of good links and should be a good starting point:
http://www.hame.ca/tiltshift.htm |
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Jack Howard, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Central Jersey | NJ | USA | Posted: 9:36 AM on 06.11.09 |
->> Harrison, I'm waiting for the 17mm TSE to arrive to write something up on this, but in the meantime, here's a very quick rundown:
-The more wide open you are, the shallower the DOF for that "mini" effect.
-You can rotate the lens barrel 270˚ so you aren't locked into tilting/shifting along just the base setting. (Honestly, 180º baseplate rotation=360º, so the extra 90º is just gravy.)
-Tilting the lens (the modifier that is arced) has more effect on creating the dramatic near-far non-parallel to the sensor plane effect.
-Shifting the lens (sliding the barrel off-center on the flat plane parallel to the sensor) affects perspective--it can be used to minimize keystoning.
-Beware the bellows affect. The more you swing, shift, and swivel, the more you'll need to compensate your exposure. Bracket like mad!
Hope this helps! Once you get the lens in your hands and experiment a little, you'll totally get all of this. Here's a shot from the top of the Arc De Triomphe where I used the 24mm TSE on the original 5D to straighten the horizon and get parallel to the boulevard running from 6'o to 12'o. I stopped down a bit for greater DOF, but at full-size, you can see the apparent focal plane meandering from lower left towards middle right: http://ow.ly/duDR |
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Harrison Shull, Photographer
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Fayetteville, WV | Asheville, NC | | Posted: 9:40 AM on 06.11.09 |
->> Thanks. I have done that search at Google and many other permutations and I still get mostly either "how to's" on faking the TS look via Photoshop or they are generic tutorials on correcting distortion for architectural shots.
I have that link bookmarked that you provided but it seems to be mostly samples rather than tutorials on the specific look (minatures) that I am looking for.
Thanks for the help and I'll keep digging. |
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Harrison Shull, Photographer
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Fayetteville, WV | Asheville, NC | | Posted: 9:43 AM on 06.11.09 |
->> Jack, thanks - good info!
I plan to shoot plenty and bracket alot but just getting tips like yours at least points me in the right direction to get me up to speed pronto. I wish that CPS has one of the wider TSE lenses available but I'll take what I can get, I guess. |
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Angus Mordant, Student/Intern
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David Harpe, Photographer
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Louisville | KY | USA | Posted: 10:50 AM on 06.11.09 |
->> Harrison,
I've done a couple of these before and they're fairly straightforward to do with a little thinking and planning. Here are some notes...note that all of these are just "best results" kinda things and not absolute rules.
The absolute most important thing is to choose the correct shooting location. You need to be elevated - from a rooftop or the top of the stands at a stadium. You want to be shooting at a pretty decent angle to your subject. I've found that between 15 and 30 degrees down makes a pretty good picture. Much past 45 gets a bit tricky. The effect works by screwing with depth perception, and if you're at too shallow of an angle you won't be showing enough depth to make it look right. If you're at too high of an angle you don't get enough feeling of "height" in your subjects, which diminishes the effect. Keep in mind the angle thing is not an absolute rule - I've seen low-angle compositions work...just not with as much frequency.
Horizontal compositions tend to work better than verticals, although verticals cropped to square seem to be pretty nice for some reason. However you compose you need the tilt axis to be running generally horizontal across the frame. Sometimes perfectly level is good, although if you have a street or something running through the frame at an angle you can sometimes get an interesting effect by rotating the axis to match the angle of the feature.
I've generally found that centering the subject in the center 1/3rd of the frame works best. After doing the tilt you should have the center 1/3 in focus with the surrounding 1/3 on either side blurred. Keep in mind that it helps to be using lenses on the telephoto side of things because you get better blur and it flattens the depth. It's not easy getting a good look with a 24mm...a 45mm is ideal...90mm even moreso if you can get back far enough from your subject. You want to have enough room in the frame to show other things of similar scale closer and farther from your subject. It's a selective focus trick, so if you have a row of people in focus it's useful to show people behind and in front that are out of focus to trick the mind into thinking the scale is tiny because of the excessive blur.
Lighting is also important. I've found that bright, somewhat diffused lighting seems to work best...although I have had some luck with late day contrasty lighting. If you have shadows they need to be going away from you and roughly the same angle you're shooting at - again it helps with the depth illusion.
When you're shooting, it's simply a matter of racking the tilt all the way out to the stops, recomposing so the subject is in the center of the frame, then stopping down to taste. You'll want to be close to wide open to accentuate the blur - but you also need enough in-focus so your subject reads correctly. Use DOF preview to set both the aperture and the focus. You can tilt the lens on either side of center, and since I'm typing this without a lens in front of me I can't remember which way works best - just try either side and see which one looks good.
You'll need to do manual exposure because the tilt/shift lens screws the light up enough to throw the camera meter off a decent amount. You can use your in-camera meter to get an in-the-ballpark exposure if you recenter the tilt and take a reading, then rack it back out.
Once you do the shot you will need to do some post-production to make it look good. You need to tone the image so the colors are on the saturated side and the image is a bit contrasty. You'll also want to sharpen the image based on reproduction size - not a ton of sharpening but a noticeable amount. Obviously you can set both of these tweaks in-camera, but it's easier to do it in photoshop because you can nail the look you want.
Once you get the hang of it they're really fun to do...although like most effects it can become cliche quite quickly, so use it sparingly :-). |
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Jack Howard, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Central Jersey | NJ | USA | Posted: 11:00 AM on 06.11.09 |
| ->> Harrison, I've also found that tempered and controlled HDR workflows make contrast-taming easier with sunny day tilt-shift shots. |
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Harrison Shull, Photographer
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Fayetteville, WV | Asheville, NC | | Posted: 11:31 AM on 06.11.09 |
->> Dave - thanks a ton!
Your post alone made my annual SS dues pay off!!! That's exactly what I was looking for - some ral world feedback minus all the Scheimpflug techtalk. |
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Max Gersh, Photographer
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St. Louis | MO | USA | Posted: 12:07 PM on 06.11.09 |
->> Tilt/Shift lenses try to achieve some of the same effects that can be done with a large format camera. Maybe instead of looking at how to use a tilt/shift lens, look into how to achieve that effect with a large format camera.
Start out by searching the term "Scheimpflug." It describes the relation of the subject, camera lens and film plane.
Here is wikipedia's article on it:
http://tinyurl.com/ykg2dc |
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Armando Solares, Photographer
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Englewood | FL | USA | Posted: 12:35 PM on 06.11.09 |
->> Harrison,
I do not have any information on tutorials, however what I did is experiment a lot with my 24mm T/S. Eventually I figured out how I wanted to best use it. "Film is cheap," an editor once told me when I was an intern at The Miami Herald. Now, digital is relatively free. Experiment, forget what others have done and do something that works for you.
For some inspiration, here is one of my favorite photographers:
http://www.claudioedinger.com/
He works with large format cameras but the outcome he is going for is relatively the same.
And to check out how I've used my T/S lens check out:
www.solaresphotography.com and look under travel.
cheers and have fun,
Armando |
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Jack Howard, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Central Jersey | NJ | USA | Posted: 9:56 AM on 06.12.09 |
->> On the subject of T-S, check out this video from Japan with the 5DM2 and T-S lenses!
http://ow.ly/dIek |
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David Harpe, Photographer
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Louisville | KY | USA | Posted: 10:44 AM on 06.12.09 |
->> Jack,
Nice link! It actually points out some of the stuff I was talking about above. You'll notice in the video he was using "digital zooms" on his timelapse shots...he was just zooming into the video using iMovie or something rather than optically zooming the lens when the timelapse was captured. In the tight shots at the beginning it doesn't really look like an effect at all...it looks like just another city timelapse. But when he zooms back full frame the illusion kicks in and the toy city effect works.
Interesting stuff! |
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Jack Howard, Photographer, Photo Editor
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