The Weekly Photo – June 6 – Tilt Shift Magic

©Darwin Wiggett

The photo above was taken on the Spring Photo Tour in the Canadian Rockies. I shot this image at sunset at the Kootenay Plains Reflecting Pools (my unofficial name for the place – click on the photo to see it larger). I used a Canon 24mm Tilt-Shift lens for three distinct advantages:

 

First, I used the shift feature to correct the perspective in the scene. With a normal 24mm lens the camera would be pointed down to take in the foreground deer skeleton and the trees in the background would distort and look like they are falling into the frame – yech! With the shift feature on the 24 TS-E lens, I simply leveled the camera back so that it was parallel to the trees and then shifted the lens down to take in the deer skeleton. The result are straight trees in the background with no distortion.

Second,  I  also used the shift feature to give me a wider field of view than a 24mm lens can give. In a single frame I could just get the skeleton and the tops of the mountain in the scene, nothing more. I wanted more sky than the 24mm lens could take in, so I shifted the lens up and took a second photo which was easily merged into a wider rectangle using Photo Merge in Photoshop CS5.

Finally, I used the tilt feature for enhanced depth-of-field. With tilt I got everything sharply focused from near to far by tilting into the plane of focus (see scheimpflug rule). Tilt can give you depth-of-filed from inches from the lens to infinity – very cool!

If you don’t know the advantages and creative power of Tilt Shift lenses for landscape photography and if you want to try out and learn how to use Tilt Shift lenses (Canon or Nikon) then be sure to come out to a seminar and field workshop by Samantha and I entitled: The Tilt-Shift Lens Advantage for Outdoor and Nature Photographers where we will demystify these powerful tools and show how they can be used in an easy to understand way. This hands on session is limited to 15 spots and we’ll have lenses on hand or bring your own lenses. The session is held in Calgary, June 11 1-4PM – see this link or email seminars@thecamerastore.com or call 403-234-9935 for more information.

Speaking of Samantha, she has just published an article for those unsure of using Social Media in photography – To Tweet or not to Tweet – check it out to see if you are a tweeter or not. So far I haven’t taken the plunge into the the twittery world….

And those of you who are fans of eBooks and like to promote the ones you find useful to friends and colleagues we are happy to announce that both Visual Wilderness (VW) and How to Photograph the Canadian Rockies (HTPTCR) websites now offer affiliate programs so that you get a percentage of any referrals you make. Help us spread the word and get paid and buy new camera goodies!

VW Affliate Program

HTPTCR Affliate Program

Finally, Here is one more sample of how to use the shift feature on Tilt Shift lenses to create megapixel wide scenes:

I took these three photos below with the lens shifted up, in the center position and then shifted down. In Photoshop all three images overlapped perfectly and Photo Merge in Photoshop CS5 aligned them perfectly into the final image (the fourth one below – from the Kootenay Plains Reflecting Pool – click to see the photo larger).

Lens shifted up

Center image - no shift

Lens shifted down

Final Image

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Some Tidbits on Tilt Shifts

Many of you know I am a big fan and user of Tilt Shift lenses where I use shift to help control perspective and to make panorama images. But mostly I use tilt to control depth-of-field independent of aperture. I love being able to use tilt to get subjects in focus from mere inches in front of the lens all the way to infinity (like in the image below). If you want to learn more about why I use tilt shift lenses and how they work go listen to  this podcast with yours truly over at Photography.ca. I highly recommend the podcasts at Photography.ca (not because I am interviewed–it must have been a slow week!) but because there are some really high profile photographers interviewed with insightful commentary (e.g. check out this podcast)

Also related to tilt shift lenses but you can do it with regular lenses is a technique that Samantha and I call Sky Stitches. We wrote about this previously in Popular Photography but now the article is on the web over at PhotoRepublik. See if this is a technique that will work for your photos.

And lastly if you missed the video I made showing how I use the shift function on the tilt shift lens to make ‘stitches’ you can see it at this link.

©Darwin Wiggett

Mount William Booth and the North Saskatchewan River at Kootenay Plains, Alberta. Canon EOS-1ds Mark III, Canon TS-E 24mm f3.5L lens.

 

The Weekly Photo – May 28

©Darwin Wiggett - 4 minute exposure

This is a shot of Glacier Lake and Mount Outram in Banff National Park taken in mixed overcast light with spots of sunlight streaming through the scene. For this photo I used a Singh-Ray LB Warming polarizer and a Singh-Ray 2-stop hard-edge grad over the sky and mountains to help even out the exposure. Base exposure was 1/4 of a second with my 24mm TS-e lens. I also added the Lee Big Stopper 10-stop ND filter to bring exposure time to 4 minutes. Having this long of an exposure gave me two advantages; first it made the clouds streak through the sky in a painterly manner and secondly it allowed the quick spotlights of sun coming into the scene to paint light onto the photo over time. For reference purposes, the shot below was taken without the Big Stopper at 1/4 of a second.

©Darwin Wiggett - 1/4 second exposure