covet :: tilt-shift

Ah, tilt-shift! The tilt-shift capacity originated with large format cameras – it allowed the photographer to move the plane of focus (tilting) and/or slide the lens up or down (shifting) – this lets you take pictures of very tall buildings without that annoying converging lines nonsense messing up your perspective (as an aside – this concept is called ‘Scheimpflug‘.  The first time our professor told us that I starting giggling uncontrollably in the middle of the lecture hall.  It’s a damn funny word.  Especially if you verb it – ‘scheimpfluging’. ‘I’m gonna scheimpflug the crap outta that building.’ Funny, right?) It also lets you do some really cool things with the plane of focus.

I’ve been wanting to play with one for a long time and just got one to test out for a week and I really really like it.  Really really.  REALLY.

Here are a few test shots I took tonight – the effect is most noticeable in the shot of Norm and the neighbor dog – you can see the plane of focus cutting across the low-middle of the frame and everything else goes right to blur.