My bed and other places

After I type this I am heading to here.


I made this picture (before I made the bed) with a Canon 24mm Tilt Shift lens. It's a great lens for squaring up buildings or rooms and for getting the near and far of a landscape in focus without having to use a small aperture to increase the depth of field.

So, for this picture, I completely reversed the settings to minimize the field of focus. I've had some interesting results using this lens incorrectly - I even based an exhibition on this method which I will tell you about in another post.

For a number of years the only camera I owned was a Sinar 4x5 (you know - tripod, big box, lenses you could buy a car with and the old black cloth over your head when composing the picture). Well, the Tilt Shift lens replicates some of the movements the large format camera can do (sort of).

It's manual focus and the more you tilt and shift the more the exposure is affected. It probably works best at around f8 - 11 and you always need to check that you haven't bumped the setting while using it. So it's a bit fiddly, but well worth the effort.

You can also shift the lens from left to right (or R to L) and stitch the two frames to make panoramas like this.


I have also found this method handy for shooting in tight spaces like this bathroom. You can get most of the room in without resorting to a distorted ultra wide view. One thing to be careful of though. If you find yourself set up in the shower cubicle (as I was here) take care not to bump the cold water tap as you position the tripod and camera.



'til next time

Paul