#TILTSHIFT PHOTOGRAPHY PLUS#

If you tilt the lens away from your subject the PoF increasingly intersects it (eventually at right angles). If you tilt the lens toward your subject the PoF increasingly becomes aligned parallel to it. This is called the Scheimpflug Principle and understanding it allows you to visualize where the PoF lies. When they cease to be parallel, the three planes (PoF, image plane, lens plane) conceptually intersect at a common point. Tilting the lens allows us to move the PoF to any orientation in the scene. In a standard configuration this is parallel to the image plane (and lens plane) and is something so fundamental that, visually, it has become imprinted in our psyche. So what does tilting and shifting actually do to the image as recorded on the sensor? Tilting has the effect of controlling the Plane-of-Focus (PoF). It wasn't until the 1960s that dedicated SLR lenses catering for tilt-shift appeared. However the introduction of handheld cameras largely set the tone for the mass produced market, although view cameras continued to use traditional designs. Tilt-shift likely developed out of the experimental nature of early photography and the desire to change focal length using simple lenses. The former is what we call tilting and the latter shifting.

#TILTSHIFT PHOTOGRAPHY PLUS#

Yet the amount of movement of the lens relative to image plane is phenomenal breaking down to the three axes of rotation (up-down, side-to-side, around), plus movement of the lens itself up-down and left-right. In modern cameras we typically are only able to change the distance between the image plane and lens - the focal length. You have a light proof box that takes the dark slide (holding the light sensitized 'film'), to which is attached light proof bellows fronted by a lens mount, to which a lens slides in (not too dissimilar to how we use filter attachments today). Take a look at the camera below that dates to the 1850s - not a screw mount in sight. Is there something so inherent to the design of the camera, yet so alien, so distant from it's original form, that we take it for granted? It's placing the lens parallel to the image plane, centering it upon the middle of the sensor.

Tiltshift photography