T&S action
25th September 2011
Over the past couple of months I have been experimenting a little more with my Tilt and shift lens and found a fabulous site (www.cambridgeincolour.com) that explains a bit of the theory and practice behind how they work. It really is a stunning lens and now I understand a bit more about it I can appreciate the reasons it costs so much!
One of the things I learnt suggested it can be used to create panoramas so I tried doing a complex HDR/T&S image of an old Mine building near Crumlin in the Valleys. This was a pretty ambitious experiment and I have to admit to not getting it totally right due to a bit of a flaw in my thinking. Basically, even with the extra wide angle of view offered by the 17mm focal length, the abandoned building was still too wide to fit in the frame. So the idea was to create a panorama using the lenses ability to shift horizontally without changing the camera position. In order to do this movement you have to revolve the lens through 90 degrees and I didn’t realise that this would also change the focal plane so that instead of the focus going from front to back it appears to be from bottom to top of the frame – thus the ground and sky are out of focus which has resulted in the blurring of the chimney stack!
To add to the complication, I also took multiple exposures at each point to do a HDR – consequently the resulting image was huge. Add in a silver effects B&W conversion to adjust the colours and you get a pretty complex workflow. As an exercise I loved it and compositionally I like the image – I just wish the focus was right throughout! I’ll just have to go back and take it again sometime.
A toned version of the full image - the forground is really out of focus when printed so I did a different treatment on it and cropped it into a letterbox that prints a bit better:
One of the things I learnt suggested it can be used to create panoramas so I tried doing a complex HDR/T&S image of an old Mine building near Crumlin in the Valleys. This was a pretty ambitious experiment and I have to admit to not getting it totally right due to a bit of a flaw in my thinking. Basically, even with the extra wide angle of view offered by the 17mm focal length, the abandoned building was still too wide to fit in the frame. So the idea was to create a panorama using the lenses ability to shift horizontally without changing the camera position. In order to do this movement you have to revolve the lens through 90 degrees and I didn’t realise that this would also change the focal plane so that instead of the focus going from front to back it appears to be from bottom to top of the frame – thus the ground and sky are out of focus which has resulted in the blurring of the chimney stack!
To add to the complication, I also took multiple exposures at each point to do a HDR – consequently the resulting image was huge. Add in a silver effects B&W conversion to adjust the colours and you get a pretty complex workflow. As an exercise I loved it and compositionally I like the image – I just wish the focus was right throughout! I’ll just have to go back and take it again sometime.
A toned version of the full image - the forground is really out of focus when printed so I did a different treatment on it and cropped it into a letterbox that prints a bit better: