Tilt & Shift Photography

What is it

People most easily recognize both real and fake "Tilt&Shift" Photography, when the scene in the photo looks like a model or a miniature. This is the case when tilt (or swing) has been used to create a seemingly shallow depth of field, or it has been simulated digitally.

Tilt&Shift photography has existed since way back in the 1800s when photographers used bellows-cameras and the like. What they discovered was that they could control perspective and the focus plane by moving and rotating the lens-system in respect to the film/glass.

Simply put, the two techniques give the following effects:

Why does it look so small

Photos taken with full upward tilt often look like macro-shots. It's a very interesting effect and has everything to do with the human eye and our brain, but not much to do with the optical properties of the lens (or the blurring in photoshop).

If you put your finger really close to your eye, like 5-10 cm, and focus on it you will see that the background will be way out of focus. The depth of field that you have created is very shallow/short. The same happens for example when we play with dolls with our faces really close to study their fine details and whatnot. Since we have done this (or similar things) thousands of times, our brains have associated shallow depth of field with small size.

So, when we see a photograph of something that has very shallow focus/depth of field, our brain assumes that the scene in the photograph has to be small. I don't know if that qualifies as an optical illusion, but it certainly looks weird sometimes. However, you can tilt in more ways than the one that creates the macro-effect.

Tilt in detail

When tilting the lens, the focus plane rotates or tilts around the axis the lens is tilted. Click the photos below and watch both the lens (tiny black thing) and the green line to the right (focal plane).
As you can see, the plane of focus can be placed on the ground (for example), which would make the ground sharp, but as you move up into the trees (in this case) things will start to go out of focus. That's hard to simulate in post processing, as the blurry effect is not contained within a rectangular area on a 2D photo, but it travels into the scene in 3D (before the world is turned into a 2D photograph).

Examples of tilting

Below, the focus plane is rotated so that it is close to the camera in the left area of the photo, and furthest from the camera in the right area of the photo. Click the photo to reveal some nice graphics.



In this fish freezing plant, the focus was placed along the floor:



In this photo, I wanted to accentuate the diagonal by leaving the model's hand and her tattoo in focus.

Shift in detail

The effect of the shift technique is much easier to understand. When shifting the lens to the right, the image circle is also moved so the camera sees more to the right than normal. This is not the same as turning the camera to the right however. The reason is that the angles and perspective would be changed by rotating the camera. But by shifting instead, all that stays the same. This makes it very nice for panoramas. Click on the photo below to se how a shift from left to right results in shifted photos. Note that the camera is not moving.



The shift function is meant for perspective control. It is used by photographers shooting architecture. You can (as in PhotoShop) correct the converging lines of a tall building or a room if the film plane is not parallel to the building/walls. So instead of turning the camera upwards to get more of the tall building, you let the camera stay level, and instead shift the lens upward to get more of the building that way.

Here is a picture where the perspective has been inverted and exaggerated, instead of countered:


The below photo has a severe shift AND tilt. Observe how the actually straight wall behind the tree almost seems to turn on some unseen axis, creating an unreal perspective. Click on the photo to see how the perspective changes with the height in the scene.



A couple of other inverted perspectives:

More Tilt&Shift Photography

You can find more examples of Tilt&Shift Photography in my blog, under the tiltshift tag. I use mostly the Canon TS-E 90mm for landscape panoramas. It is not always plain to see which way the tilt-effect "turns", but that's part of the magic. With the Canon 45mm TS-E and especially the Canon 24mm TS-E the perspective effect using the shift-function gets really visible. The 90mm does not display such a big perspective effect because it is a short tele lens.

If you have any questions about Tilt&Shift Photography or the equipment I use, just drop a comment at the bottom here, or send me an email.