Tilt Shift

After watching too many hours of "Adult Swim" on the Cartoon Network, I decided I needed to figure out how to shoot those "real world" miniature commercial bumps shots. So like so many others, I started scouring the web to find an answer.

First, I started with a Lens Baby. Although it produces an okay image, I wasn't overly impressed with the results. For some reason the images just seem, well, pulled in a direction with a certain "fast" quality about them. Unfortunately, that's not what I wanted so the Baby went into the drawer along with the Nikon F3. Why put the F3 into semi-retirement? Well, doing this tilt-shift stuff on film can get really, really expensive really, really fast. So what did I do? Well, I bought a rather expensive digital SLR instead -- Nikon D200. I have to say, it was a great investment.

Anyhow, back to tilt-shift. Not satisfied with the Lens Baby approach, I opted to create my own lens. Again, back to the web for ideas and gathered a few. Eventually, I settled on an enlarger lens from Voss (f3.5, 75mm) and created my own bellows-like attachment. A macro barrel extension kit, opaque drawer liner material, gaffer's and electrical tape, and an 1 1/2" nylon drain gasket was all it took to come up with my own lens. I've gone through many versions (starting with garbage bags) and settled on Voss DIY tilt shift lens v4. Not satisfied with that, I purchased a Wollensak 135mm enlarger lens and built v1 of that lens, complete with a crude flexible bellows.

236 photos | 543 views

items are from between 06 Apr 2008 & 07 Sep 2009.