Today I'm going to show you what a tilt shift lens is if you've been into
photography for a while you may have heard of a tilt shift lens or you may
have seen the tilt shift effect used in cameras on Instagram and other places
like that but this is actually based around a lens you can buy that tilts and
shift hence the name first of all there are two places where you can rotate the
lens and these have click lock points at 30 degree increments one rotates the
tilting section and the other rotates the shifting section then you have the
tilting section with measurements and the shifting section also with
measurements as many of you know I use Sony cameras and Sony don't make a tilt
shift lens so I've had to have a Canon adapted one and I've got it on the MC 11
Sigma adapter I have this samyang tilt shift lens that Canon do make some
fantastic ones but they are a little bit expensive so the samyang is a good
cost-effective solution and if you're shooting off a tripod and you're
stopping down to f/8 the picture quality is fantastic and not that far off the
Canon lenses which are over twice the price now due to the complexity of the
lens they are all manual focus lenses no matter which one you buy and how much
you spend on it so you will have to utilize your magnify tool to get the
focus where you want it and as there is a lot of manhandling of this lens when
shifting or tilting you really do need to check the focus once you have the
lens where you want it so magnify in and make sure the focus is spot-on before
taking your next shot each of the functions the tilt and the shift has a
locking dial and a fine tuning dial so you undo the locking point you move the
lens to where you want it and then lock it into place on this side of the lens
you can see the levers which release the rotational planes in this lens and like
I've already said it locks into place at 30 degree increments so
with a little manipulation of each of these settings you can get it exactly
where you want it as well as using these settings separately you can actually use
them together terr creates an even more unique looking
image now i mostly use tilt shift lenses for architectural photography they can
produce more accurate photographs without sacrificing any pixels they can
also be used to give you that miniature effect and this works best in time
lapses now I'm going to show you how to shoot architecture and how to shoot that
miniature effect with this lens so using the tilt function and the shift function
this is basically where the front of the lens arcs around a center point when you
do this you alter the plane of focus as you tilt
it more and more you will get a smaller and smaller part of the image in focus
now this can produce some really interesting photos and together with
turning the focusing dial you can get that thin strip which is in focus
exactly where you want it in the photograph all you need to do is tilt
the lens and then turn the focus dial to get what you want in focus you may have
to recompose the shot a little but after a bit of practice you can get some
great-looking shots for this effect to work well it's best to get up high and
look down maybe on a busy junction or an intersection or a walkway where there's
either traffic or pedestrians walking around it's basically as if you're
looking down on a miniature model to accentuate this miniature effect it's
best to shoot a time-lapse I normally use a one-second interval for people
walking around a busy area and if I'm photographing cars I'll normally do a
half a second interval if you are not sure about time lapses and interval
times but want to learn more I've done quite a few videos on this so look at
the link in the corner or the link in the description for more of these videos
now to get this miniature effect working well it does take a little time and
experience but when you do get it right it really does look like a model it
surprised me when I first got a couple of shots that looked really good when
you shift the lens you move the end of the
parallel to the plane of the sensor and this enables you to do a few different
things let's say you're taking a photograph of
a tall building with a standard lens normally you'd have to tilt the camera
up to fit everything in and this will make the buildings look as if they're
leaning backwards but with the tilt shift lens you can get around this so
the first thing you have to do is set your camera so both planes are level so
it's level side to side and it's level front to back the level screen that's
built into most cameras works really well for this and if you don't have that
you can normally get a square bubble flow that sits in the hotshoe on the top
of the camera then all you do is make sure the lens is twisted round the right
way then if you shift the front of the lens up you can get the top of the
building in the frame now if we look at an image taken with a normal lens and
then the tilt-shift lens you can see their second one has much more vertical
lines and the building actually looks like it's standing up straight as
opposed to leaning backwards another way you can use this lens is say if you're
taking a photo of something that is too tall or too long for the lens to fit in
one frame then you can take a sequence of shots using this shift function to
take the top of the building the middle of the building and the bottom of the
building so with these buildings I can't quite
fit them in the frame so all I'm gonna do is set the levels on the back of the
camera then I'll shift the lens up to get the top of the building in the frame
I'll take a shot there and then I'll shift it down to get the bottom of the
building in the frame once you have the images back in your editing program with
a little bit of stitching you can have a photograph of the whole building just
make sure your camera is set to manual mode so the settings stay exactly the
same between photographs a benefit of taking a photograph like this with one
of these lenses over just doing a vertical panorama is that the building
will appear more vertical you can also turn the shift function through 90
degrees and shoot a panorama with it so again if what you're shooting is
slightly wider than your frame take a photograph shift it to the right and
take another photo then shift it to the left
and take the third photo with this technique you'll end up with a much
bigger image than normal and even though you could take the same shot with a
wide-angle lens and then crop in afterwards this way it'll be a much more
detailed shot with a much higher megapixel count and you can also use
this in portrait orientation or landscape orientation there are a few
other ways you can use a tilt-shift lens but I just wanted to cover the basics
today now have you had any experiences with a tilt shift lens if you have let
me know in the comments below how you got on with it and if you're interested
in cityscape photography click on this next video here and for using a normal
lens to create a super wide angle photo click on this next video down here and
if you haven't already make sure to subscribe for weekly tutorials in
photography I'll see you next time