Tilt-shift images can be made one of two ways: one is to capture them in-camera using a tilt-shift lens, and the other is to create the effect in post-production by using a clever blurring technique.
One isn't necessarily better than the other -- each has its own time and place -- but more often than not, creating the effect in post-production is the most convenient (read: cheapest) method.
We're not sure how most of the world missed this time-lapse for the first 10 months of its existence, but we're thrilled it finally made it onto our radar. Put together by writer/director Sean Collins of Bodhi Films, it's his "tribute to the beautiful city of Boston" -- and it rocks.
Put together by Aussie photographer Filippo Rivetti for Expedia, ‘Tiny Sydney’ is an incredibly beautiful tilt-shift time-lapse captured around the New South Wales capital (not the Australian capital... that's Canberra), Sydney.
From Jay P. Morgan of The Slanted Lens comes an educational and behind the scenes video out of Yanks Air Museum in Chino, California. Throughout the video, Morgan gives insight into the process of using a tilt-shift lens and shares some nice background information on how a tilt-shift lens actually works.
Photographs of galaxies far far away rarely convey just how large what you're looking at really is -- after all, how can you even fathom something that is measured in light years across. But these photos of the cosmos do an even worse job. By applying the tilt-shift effect in post, these photos show galaxies and nebulae look like they could fit comfortably in the palm of your hand.
We don't typically share two time-lapses in the same day, since most people see that genre as over-saturated as it is, but today we have good reason to. The first is a landscape time-lapse so gorgeous National Geographic took notice, and this one, well this one may completely change the way you look at tilt-shift where time-lapse is concerned.
Getting your camera noticed if it's not also a smartphone or a high-end shooter is getting harder by the day. And phones such as the newly announced Galaxy S4 Zoom are quickly shrinking the quality gap between the camera phone and the regular old camera.
Relics of the Future is a short documentary that follows Toronto-based fine art photographer Toni Hafkenscheid as he explores the world of once-futuristic architecture through his tilt-shift lens. In the 1960's, these buildings and monuments were considered "visions of the future;" now they stand, as one interviewee put it, "on that fence between futuristic and nostalgic."
New York-based photographer Richard Silver is a passionate traveler, and his primary goal as an artist is to share his life experiences by creating beautiful photographs during his travels. Rather than shoot traditional photos, he uses techniques such as tilt shift, HDR, panorama, and time-slice in order to capture the world in eye-catching ways. Last year we shared his time-slice photos of NYC, which showed day turning into night in single photos.
Another major project he has been working on is called "Tilt Shift." He has been photographing some of the world's most famous locations and turning them into miniature scenes.
The rumor mill is churning regarding Canon's tilt-shift lens lineup. The company will reportedly be announcing replacements to its two oldest TS-E lenses by the end of this year, and the lenses are likely already floating around in the wild for real world field tests.
Freelensing is a relatively inexpensive way of getting the similarly unique effect of an expensive tilt-shift lens, where the focus plane is thrown out of whack with the added bonus of natural light leaks. No, this isnt anything new, and the look that an expensive tilt-shift lens gives has been around for a while, but I wanted to share with you my experience with it and how I did it.
The Birth of a Pond video above was shot by photographer James Breen over a three week period as he watched a construction crew create a pond from scratch in the Fall of 2009. To be fair, he didn't catch the entire "birthing" process, the final scene was captured a year after the pond was completed (allowing it enough time to fill naturally) but the video is still quite mesmerizing to watch.
In their most recent "Pro Photographer, Cheap Camera" challenge, DigitalRev managed to get world-renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Vincent Laforet to participate. Known best, perhaps, for his tilt-shift work, Laforet was asked to trade in his 1D X and 45mm tilt-shift lens for a Canon A2e and Lensbaby composer.
Freelensing. It’s been around for a while. It’s essentially the “poor man’s tilt shift.” All the technique requires is disconnecting a lens from the camera body and floating it around in front of your sensor to shift the focal plane in weird directions. It takes practice to get accurate with it, but overall the technique is pretty straightforward.
I wanted to take it a bit further.
Watch out Lensbaby. A recently published Olympus patent (No. 2012-199834) suggests that the Japanese camera company may be developing a selective-focus tilt lens of its own. The patent describes a technique for compensating for the "color shift" and image degradation that occur when using a tilt lens.
"Entry level" is a huge theme in the photo gear industry this year, and it's not limited to cameras. Lensbaby has also joined in on the action by announcing its new Spark lens. It's stripped-down plastic version of the company's selective focus lenses, allowing you to shoot fun "tilt-shift"-style photos without breaking the bank.
Vancouver-based photographer Eszter Burghardt creates miniature landscapes using food (e.g. seeds, powders, milk) and wool, and then photographs them using a shallow depth of field. Her images show everything from volcanos to icebergs. The projects are titled "Edible Vistas" and "Wooly Sagas".
The annual Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is considered to be the …
Photography enthusiast Maciej Pietuszynski jumped into tilt-shift photography recently by building a do-it-yourself …
Flickr user Alex12Ga turned his Canon 5D Mark II into a DIY digital view camera by mounting a Novar-Anastigmat 75mm f/3.5 lens from 1949 with its original bellows. He mounted the bellows to his camera using an aluminum plate and an EOS mount ring that he salvaged from a broken Sigma lens.
Norwegian design studio Skrekkøgle -- the one that printed a photo with a cremated dog -- has a creative project called "Big Money" in which they made a giant 20:1 replica of a 50 cent Euro coin. They then placed the coin next to large objects and photographed them together, making the objects look like tiny toy replicas.
Local TV station WGN made this beautiful tilt-shift time-lapse video of Chicago, giving …
Pre-med student Ryan Killackey and his wife spent nearly two years shooting 10,000 …
Some photographers try to make miniatures look like the real world, while others aim to make the …
Sam O’Hare is developing quite a reputation for his tilt-shift, miniature faking videos. O'Hare is the same guy that created The Sandpit, a beautiful tilt-shift video of New York City that has been watched nearly 2 million times. He was recently commissioned by the Coachella Music Festival to create a similar video for Coachella 2010, and the resulting video (shown above) is just as stunning.
When Jon Martin found an old Kodak Ektar 101mm f4.5 lens from the 1940's at work, he decided to try it on his D700 by freelensing to testing and see if it was compatible. After finding that it was, he began on building a rig to use it as a tilt-shift lens. He ended up building a rig using old camera gear and some custom wood parts.
Shukhrat of MINIMUS DESIGN created this time-lapse video of his favorite places in …
Remember the 102-year-old lens experiment we shared a week ago? Daire Quinlan did something similar -- he combined his grandfather's 6x9 Pocket Kodak lens from 1920 (90 years ago) with homemade bellows to create his own tilt-shift lens to play with. Unlike Timur Civan, who used his 102-year-old lens on a 5D Mark II, Quinlan used his frankenlens with a Nikon film camera.
Lensbaby unveiled a new accessory at Photokina called the Tilt Transformer, which allows you to use Nikon mount lenses on EVIL camera bodies as an instant tilt-shift lens with twice the tilt of normal TS lenses. It's currently available for Micro Four Thirds bodies, but will be available for Sony NEX cameras as well starting on October 28, 2010. The Tilt Transformer comes with the Lensbaby Composer in a $350 package, or separately for $250.
Here's a fun idea: take famous landscape paintings and add a tilt-shift effect to them! This series of images was created by Artcyclopedia using famous Van Gogh paintings. We love how the selective focus gives the paintings a new dimension.