The Fundamentals of Tilt-Shift Lenses

Support this channel at / filmmakeriq
In the last Just One Thing - I mentioned that perspective issues were traditionally fixed using tilt shift lenses. Well many of you wanted to see a video on that very topic. So here it is - the basics of what you need to know about tilt-shift lenses!
If you want to check out the math of the Scheimpflug Principle - here's the Wikipedia entry:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheimp...
#TiltShift #Lenses #Filmmaking #photography

[@cowboyfrankspersonalvideos8869]

Between 1960 and 1981, my father was a photographer for the Smithsonian Institution. One of his many jobs was to shoot annual record photographs of all the first ladies gowns. The gowns are displayed on manikins in room size cases behind a glass wall, which dad had to shoot through, and caused lots of problems from reflections of both the rest of the room and lights. He used view cameras to solve both the angular issue of where he had to place the camera to avoid reflections and focus issues from the gowns not being the same distance from the camera due to the way they are displayed. He had to do this during the night after the museum was closed, rather than having to close the exhibit during the day. Another job he did with a view camera was photographing the Hope Diamond as it was taken out of it's display once a year for cleaning and inspection. The view camera allowed him to solve both focus and angular distortion due to the fact the diamond was displayed on a slanted stand. One year the diamond was not sitting just right and, with permission, he actually handled the diamond to readjust the way it was laying on the display mount. Back then the diamond was displayed in a wall safe. It's now in the center of the room in a glass case. Wow, I just went over to the Wikipedia page on the diamond and the photo shown from 1974 was shot by my father. I recognize the way one of the fuzzy small stones behind the main jewel has a tiny orange reflection at the bottom. He showed a print of that photo to me the week he shot it. Not all the photos he shot were totally front to back sharp, they wanted all kinds of images.

[@FilmmakerIQ]

What a fantastic story!

[@cpdavy]

What focal length for tilt shify

[@cowboyfrankspersonalvideos8869]

@@cpdavy Afraid I have no idea. That was 50 years ago.

[@saikatchattopadhyay8263]

Love to see you back with these properly informative and articulated videos. No doubt you are one of the most authentic Film-Tech channels .

[@merylcando]

Your pronunciation is pretty close to impeccable. Wow, my name got bigger, and I am getting educated to boot. I am one of your audience who does show your instructional videos to my animation (perspective drawing) students. I sent them off yesterday, with "Get out there and make something GREAT!" and made sure they knew you said it first!!

[@FilmmakerIQ]

Thank you for your patronage!!

[@merylcando]

@@FilmmakerIQ I will email on Patreon with a question.

[@simontrickfilmer]

Scheimpfloog, would be more correct :-) The U like in "Hook"

[@ThioJoe]

Tilt Shift lenses are awesome but expensive. They can also sometimes be used for close-up product photography if you can't quite get everything you want in focus, to avoid needing to do focus stacking.

[@BaltaBueno]

OH SNAP! Haven't seen you in a while man, glad to find you randomly here :D

[@gizmo557]

Hi

[@TheBohrokMan]

I never realized that the miniature effect on a tilt shift isn't real depth of field (for far enough away objects)! It seems obvious now. Thanks for putting out such high quality information!

[@RCAvhstape]

These technical photography videos are my favorite, John, great job.

[@popsfreshenmeyer7607]

Your videos are a great ressource and very professional. All the effort you put into these is astounding. Much appreciated :) Stay safe and peace out!

[@stephenbaker555]

Thanks for being to the point and using excellent graphics to make things clear.

[@rohitkumarn8]

it's soo good to see you again... amazing as always 👍

[@KendrickHarrisKenfinity]

Alright, it's awesome and definitely intriguing to find out exactly how tilt shift lenses are used. And can create unique shots and panoramas. Stay safe and keep doing what you're doing!

[@SinaFarhat]

Informative and great as usual! :) Keep up the good work!

[@dwegmull]

If you use SLR lenses adapted to a mirrorless digital camera, you can get adapters with either tilt or shift built-in.

[@idahofallsmagazine3691]

They work fairly well (fotodiox), but they are a far cry in quality from a proper TS-E Canon lens, especially the newer L series.

[@antugolder7484]

I think it is the best channel for Learning film making

[@shawndonnelly862]

Thank you very much for the video. I have 24mm TS EF lens but have only used it a few times. When you need it, it is handy.

[@KuenHLee]

Tilt-Shift lenses are really one of the most underrated lens categories in my personal opinion. I often having hard time to find anyone around me that can appreciate them as much as I could. It’s partly also that I am personally obsessive ( kind of OCD actually ) that I have been only shooting with TS-E lenses for many years. Thanks for mentioning about these lens categories here. Wished more people actually know these lenses are not really for the purposes of making miniature toy town. I have the original TS-E 45, TS-E 90, TS-E 24mk2 & TS-E 17.

[@idahofallsmagazine3691]

Pretty similar to my lineup. However, I kinda LIKE the fact that they are underappreciated. When I get asked how to achieve that certain "look" (not just the miniature cliche stuff), I try to describe the technique and downplay the gadgetry.

[@mrKeyCat]

Thank you for a very informative and very easy to understand high-quality video.

[@iltonkdr]

So well explained in detail! Thank you

[@budgiefriend]

I didn't know lenses could do that. Thank you for the insight.

[@mr88cet]

Thanks, John! Your video here helped me finally decide to pick up the Samyang tilt-shift lens (limited, but reasonably-priced). Admittedly, I haven’t had a lot of time to experiment with it yet, but here are two things I have done, or have in mind to do, with it: 1. Next time the wildflowers come out here in Central Texas (and I’m not in COVID-19 lockdown!), I’d like to use the tilt and Sceimpflug effect to get the flower heads themselves in focus and the stems and leaves below them out-of-focus, for both close-up and farther-away flowers. 2. I have already used the shift feature in a surprising way: The usual architectural-photography usage you pointed out was to keep walls and columns parallel. I’ve used it to produce exactly the opposite effect: To exaggerate the imparallelness you get when you aim the camera upward. That is, rather than shifting the lens upward, I instead shifted it downward and then tilted the camera upward even more than I would with a traditional lens! The result was interesting. 3. If I do the opposite of that - shift the lens up, but point the camera body download - parallel columns tilt away from each other at the top, rather than toward each other, like on a traditional lens!

[@pdrg]

This is the stuff you do so well

[@orelbitan]

Love your channel, thanks for everything, I've learned a lot!

[@sjhstone]

You really managed to maximize the whole duration of the video to deliver the most intuitive and consistent explanation about tilt-shift lens so far on the Internet. Thank you so much, John!

[@lafeo0077]

love this already

[@gizmo557]

Thank you, now i know much more about lens 🤩😍

[@zupperm]

Whoa I always thought the shift would make the whole flagpole to be in focus but it doesn't. Thanks for the explainer.

[@FilmmakerIQ]

same here!

[@olivermengershausen2686]

A video about the use and sense of anamorphic lenses (refurbished old ones or the “cheap” new ones on the market) would be great!

[@FilmmakerIQ]

I'm actually working on a pretty big one about why and amorphic lenses have oval bokeh

[@PaulKretz]

Tasty stuff! Thank you ,sir! 👏

[@gunnaryoung]

Thank you, I was looking forward to this one!

[@RecklessRowly]

I use Tilt Shift lenses for shooting landscapes with an aparent infinite depth of field. invariably I use the tilt a lot more than the shift. It did however take me a while to wrap my head around how the tilt worked, and for the first few outings returned with nothing but blurred photos. However it was worth the learning curve.

[@thomasrobbins1171]

I've used only tilt-shift lenses for landscapes for years. It allows for aspect ratios that match the circumstances and subject without having to crop down from a 35mm size sensor.

[@idahofallsmagazine3691]

Same here. To me, they are the creative gold standard for landscapes. Anytime I get accused of photoshop tirickery, I take it as a compliment.

[@prakul697]

This was very insightful. Thank you for sharing 🙌🏻

[@RDSimpson]

good to know !

[@Lurker1979]

I want one just for my photography. They are so cool. They tend to cost an arm and a leg.

[@Leprutz]

I believe the tilt shift lense has only so much use for some very specific things and maybe specially more for still photography. Wouldn't make much sense for a video. But only who tries will know and maybe discover something new. Great video. Thanks.

[@idahofallsmagazine3691]

Correcting converging verticals in an establishing shot should make a lot of sense, don't you think? Some of those Conjuring/Sinister movies have insanely converging verticals with superwide angles, but that is for effect. Out of context, that look is distracting and amateurish.

[@Leprutz]

@@idahofallsmagazine3691 i dont understand what you are saying.

[@idahofallsmagazine3691]

@@Leprutz So if you have a wide-angle establishing shot in front of a castle or whatever, do you want the vertical lines of that structure to converge? Probably not, unless you want them to converge in order to convey some kind of emotive, psychologically unsettling effect like you see in some horror movies. That's all I'm saying. Sorry for any lack of clarity. Here's something for reference: books.google.com/books?id=vzq805jZSAoC&pg=PA108&lpg=PA108&dq=wide+angle+lens+sinister+movie&source=bl&ots=xW52OnFfG5&sig=ACfU3U3FKvr-bmuWpzayuUfpTnPOWZ0U9Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwia3YqZjcXxAhUOip4KHdQnCuEQ6AEwCnoECBAQAw#v=onepage&q=wide%20angle%20lens%20sinister%20movie&f=false

[@Leprutz]

@@idahofallsmagazine3691 no problem. You are being very clear. Sometimes i dont understand english.

[@luthfirizal8475]

Wow awesome

[@wZem]

Looking at the Wikipedia page and another video on KZbin, I didn't really get it. This video explained the concept very well with the animations and examples. As a German, I should point out that your pronounciation of the name Scheimpflug is quite good, but it is probably Scheim-pflug, not Scheimp-flug. Pflug (pronounced like 'pfloog') means a plow in German. ✌😉

[@Frisenette]

The reason shift works is a bit different than what you imply. To get a usable shift effect, you first of all need not only a lens that actually covers the image circle you are shifting into. That is, a lens that could actually covers a bigger piece of film, thereby losing quite a few stops of light. But the lens also needs to be wide angle. So you are actually using the natural perspective distortion away from the center of the rectilinear wide angle lens to correct the perspective. You can do the exact same thing, only with lower resolution for the subject by only using part of the frame, with a normal unshifted lens. If you have a wide angle lens on your phone it’s very easy to do right now, by just pointing it down slightly when standing in front of a building. When shifting, you most often also need a bit of tilt to correct focus. The real correct way to get a big building straight, flat and proportional, is to use a very long tele lens and then move a hundred of meters, or even a kilometer or two away. That supposes there is a free view and not a lot of humidity and heatwaves in the air. Andreas Feininger made some wonderful photographs of New York using this approach in the mid twentieth century.

[@RCAvhstape]

For those who are interested in playing with this, you can make a poor man's tilt-shift lens for your SLR using an old camera body cover, a longer focal length lens, and one of those bellows-looking toilet plungers. It's not pretty or precise, but it can be fun for experimenting with still photos. Motion photos, well, that's probably tougher. You'd need a way to lock it all in position. I haven't figured that out quite yet.

[@FilmmakerIQ]

There's also a thing called "lens whacking" where you disconnect the lens and then hold it in the mount but tilt and shift it about - can create neat flares that way too.

[@matt_kelly]

I can’t find the video any more, but i found a video that explained how to use a tilt shift lens to get mirror shots without having the camera in frame. I thought that was neat.

[@FilmmakerIQ]

Was it to shift to reframe the shot so the camera isn't in the reflection? That makes sense!

[@matt_kelly]

@@FilmmakerIQ Yes, the person was in the middle of the frame in a fairly wide shot and was facing the camera dead on, it looked quite good.

[@peek118]

Could you talk about split focal length lenses? thank you.

[@FilmmakerIQ]

Split diopters? It's just a glass that's been cut in half. Personally I dislike the look.

[@yogyog]

Quick note... if you are planning to composite 3d into your tilt-shift lens (or for that matter perspective corrected or even cropped footage) .... you will be making life harder for yourself. Not imposible, but make sure that your perspective matching or camera tracking program knows that ... if you were in single point perspective, the vanishing point is no longer dead centre.

[@ColinRobertson_LLAP]

Another aspect of (many) tilt-shift lenses is they tend to have little to no distortion. But yeah, they're basically made for shooting architecture.

[@idahofallsmagazine3691]

In Canon's lineup, that's only true for the 17 and 24. The 45, 50, 90 and 135 are geared toward landscape, product and portraiture.

[@brandcrumbs]

Could you please do a video on how tilt-shift or what filming technique was used on the Disney + Series - The Imagineering Story ??

[@FilmmakerIQ]

Need to be more specific than that...

[@brandcrumbs]

@@FilmmakerIQ Promise you'll know exactly what I mean if you put the show on for 10 minutes, its all throughout and definitely stands out

[@FilmmakerIQ]

Watched a few minutes and didn't see anything that wasn't standard documentary photography. Please be specific about the shot you're asking about.

[@brandcrumbs]

@@FilmmakerIQ crap, thank you for checking. So they have these timelapses in tilt shift style - it made the people, cars, trolleys, rides all look like miniatures/CGI but looking closely, they were real!

[@FilmmakerIQ]

Probably the same thing they did with the Late Night Show intro - they probably rotoscoped out elements and selectively blurred them.

[@MzTypeOHnegative]

Rnadom question... is there a way to check if footage is 60i? I want to basically go on and download random youtube videos and check if it's in 60i. Is this possible? I keep seeing a lot of 23.98 videos but they don't look truly like 23.98.

[@FilmmakerIQ]

There won't be any 60i on KZbin as KZbin does not present interlaced footage. You can right click on the frame and select stats for nerds. If you think 23.98 didn't look right because it's too smooth... That's because counter to all the crap opinion out there, 24 can be made to be buttery smooth.

[@moreblastreviews9777]

good

[@maxdmachy]

Amazing tutorial. Just one question - to me getting rid of falling lines feels like a dated concept. At some point in the past people were used to different projections as used in plans, history textbooks or on paintings. Kids these days are familiar with a wide range of projections, fisheyes, badly distorting wide angle glass, beautiful rectangular Leica super- wides and VR. Accordingly t/s is used for effect. One effectiv would be the objectivity - as known from Bauhaus trained people like Andreas Feininger or all these shades of realism like the Bechet school - Gursky was at some point a highly paid photographer present in major art collections. For 99,9 % of 3rd millennium photographers t/s glass is not worth the money. Effects can so easily added in post What do you think?

[@FilmmakerIQ]

I don't think getting rid of falling lines is a dated concept, it's just not an absolute necessity but it can be a stylistic choice (which is easier and cheaper to do in post). Sometimes it just fixes something with a shot, making it cleaner. I did it to a talking head shot a month ago where I felt some of the leading lines were distracting and I was forced to shoot that way because of space limitations.

[@idahofallsmagazine3691]

The miniature gimmick can be added in post. That's true. But to mimic a landscape shot at, say... 90mm, where you have foreground and background elements in crisp focus... that would take multiple exposures and lots of photoshoppery. Anything but easy.

[@seanmckinnon4612]

It’s “shine-floog” or boresight at least in the projection world

[@filipenbarros]

Do you know any movies that use scheimpflug effect besides Star Wars?

[@idahofallsmagazine3691]

Check out The Undoing on HBO. It's done perfectly.

[@loginregional]

Holey Underwear! There's someone else who understands Swing'n'tilt photography... not since 1971 has anyone I've ever met been able to explain it as I was taught... but who has a studio camera with a bellows and a ground glass focussing plane? Not me!

[@janlohse3130]

Shouldn't the lens be moving down instead of up at 2:53? You're moving the sensor down relative to the lens, which should also move the visible portion of the image down instead of up.

[@FilmmakerIQ]

Don't forget the image projected on the sensor is upside down. So when you shift the lens up, the image (when rotated to the correct orientation) shifts down.

[@J3ff_K1ng]

I watched a few videos about this and i wonder why to shift the lens and not the camera to reach the same But after watching your massive camera on the city hall I know why you would like to move only the lens

[@FilmmakerIQ]

You could shift the sensor plane, they do that with large sheet film cameras. Light didn't know which side is shifted

[@thomasgorman6513]

One thing to note about shifting though: When you "shift up" to reframe your shot it is NOT the same as actually moving the sensor. It will look like you zoomed out and then cropped in, but the parallax that will occur if you move the camera will not be there in a tilt shift lens.

[@brianthomas6500]

Many lenses can be turned 90 deg and so a vertical plane can be in focus.

[@TinySpeck]

Showing post-edited footage for the tilt-shift lenses fundamentals...

[@numbblackpicture]

If you say "Scheimpfloog" you nail it. The u-sound in german is longer than you guys use it in the word plug for example.. Also, if this guys name would be SchLeimpflug, it would translate to Mucusplough wich I think sounds funny. Disgusting but funny.

[@mauriciomilenkorodriguezpa617]

Suuuuuup! :D

[@EverClever]

Galileo's Law of Relativity? Huh?

[@FilmmakerIQ]

It's more tongue in cheek but yes it's a thing: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_invariance

[@EverClever]

@@FilmmakerIQ Learn something new everyday. Love your content. Could do some videos going over the business side of filmmaking? Lawyers, distribution, sales managers, things like that?

[@AndrewNiccol]

I don't understand......

[@FilmmakerIQ]

what part? It might be benificial to start with my lens series and get caught up: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z4qsp6mOrdiFa7s

[@AndrewNiccol]

@@FilmmakerIQ Maybe is I'm not native english speaker, the auto-generated subtitle is kind of weird, it can't identify that many jargon. Still a great video, keep going.

[@hassanabbasbirmani]

what took you so long man?

[@FilmmakerIQ]

Work!