Sketch shots: Tilt-Shift

In the old days, camera's consisted of lenses mounted separately and connected to the main body with bellows.  This allowed the lens to be shifted up or down, left or right and tilted along the same axes.  This feature created some rather awesome possibilities for your photography.

You can still buy "field" camera's that do the same thing, but they are not nearly as prevalent as the cameras of today where the lens is hard-mounted to the body.  Enter the tilt-shift lens.  If you've got the money, you can buy tilt/shift lenses in different focal lengths, such as this 90mm Canon lens.

If you have the money...
Or can justify the purchase - if your wife will let you...

Or, you could buy one of the Lensbaby devices (this will win over your wife if you first show her the lens option)

I'm gonna do what photogs have been doing before there were tilt-shift lenses or Lensbaby's - I'm going to detach my lens and hold it in front of the camera body while I'm shooting.

WHAT?!?!

Yep, something I picked up this morning.  I was doing my usual morning surfing and ran into a cool shot using that technique.  That's REAL old school!

I got so excited by the idea I grabbed a camera, did a real quick natural light setup and shot Teddy.  (so quick I've lost the original web page that I got this idea from. Respect to whoever that was - my apologies for losing you)

Canon 20D, 85mm F1.2 lens @ F/1.2

Now, the first thing one realizes when making a shot this way - there's no control of the aperture.  You're shooting wide open cause you can't close it down when it's off the body.  Make sense?  So, for consistency I shot all images of Teddy wide open so I wouldn't have to worry about changing settings when I took the lens off.

Other factors are also at play - first, there's lens-to-sensor distance.  The shot above was taken from roughly 3 feet away.  That's as close as I can get and still achieve sharp focus with the 85mm when it's mounted normally.  You can buy extension tubes, which allow you to get closer, even into the macro realm.  But these tubes maintain the parallel relationship of the lens to the film sensor.  You can't tilt  the lens to a different angle for additional effects.

But you can with a LensBaby or holding the lens by hand.  And since I'm strapped at the moment, I'm going with the latter. 

This is what I got!

See how close I can get just by extending the distance between the lens and sensor?
I'm only about 10" away!

Both images are as shot, with minor contrast and tone curve adjustments in Lightroom.  No cropping or clarity/sharpness tricks were used.

Pretty snappy, huh?!?!

There is something to take into account though - camera shake.  Instead of just having to just stabilize your camera, you now have to stabilize it AND the lens while maintaining distance and orientation.  Doing this hand-held, as I did, can be shaky (pun intended).  It took several attempts to get a good result.  I set my elbows on the table, pressed the camera's viewfinder into my forehead, and got a strong grip on the camera with my right hand.  Resting the camera against the palm of my left hand helped stabilize it and the lens, and maintain the spacing. That leaves it to the fingers and thumb to hold the lens at the desired position. 

Once I got the hang of it, it worked pretty good! And it was cool to shift the lens around and see the results. However, one final note - be careful how far you space the lens away from the body - too far and you'll get haze on your image from light sneaking through the gap.

I could have tried to do this with a tripod, but I don't have a means to extend mine out over the table I was shooting from. I didn't want to pull Teddy over to the edge, I would have lost the bounced light from the white surface he was standing on.  In the end, patience and a little trial and error gave me a great shot.

There's a certain sense of security when you're free-holding your expensive lens a few inches from the table top, but what am I gonna do when I shoot a 5'10" model?!  hmmmm.....

Hope you enjoyed...