One of the more unusual lenses available for an SLR camera is what’s known as a tilt-shift lens. These are primarily used by architectural photographers and offer the ability to control more than just the focal length and the focus point – with additional controls on the lens they have the ability to tilt perspective (for example to straighten up converging lines in shots of tall buildings) and shift the focal plane away from the plane of the image sensor (for example to keep objects along a particular line in focus).
Tilt-shift lenses are therefore quite specialized, and so also quite expensive. However even away from architecture they are useful, especially in a creative sense, where the ability to shift the focal plane allows some interesting effects. Wedding photographers are starting to use them more for bride and groom shots where they can be standing some distance apart, the bride near the camera, the groom in the background, but both held in focus.
For a certain type of shot, the effect of the tilt-shift lens is to miniaturize the scene and make it look like people and cars are actually toys. This effect can be achieved almost as effectively with Photoshop, and I’ve done that on this photograph of Seville, taken from a nearby bell tower, to show the end result.
The original image had much of the scene in focus due to the small aperture, intentionally chosen for that reason. However, when I apply some tilt-shift effects in post processing and selectively focus on a narrow band of the image all of a sudden the people on the roof top terrace seem look like toys. It’s hard to explain why, but I gather that the brain assumes that the viewer is much closer to the subjects due to the in-focus area of the image being so narrow. It’s an interesting effect for a narrow range of shot, but one that’s good to experiment with if the right image presents itself.
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