Tilt–shift photography

Tilt is used to control the orientation of the plane of focus (PoF), and hence the part of an image that appears sharp; it makes use of the Scheimpflug principle.

Shift is used to adjust the position of the subject in the image area without moving the camera back; this is often helpful in avoiding the convergence of parallel lines, as when photographing tall buildings.

Nikon introduced a lens providing shift movements for their 35 mm SLR cameras in 1962,[1] and Canon introduced a lens that provided both tilt and shift movements in 1973;[2] many other manufacturers soon followed suit.

Ben Thomas, Walter Iooss Jr. of Sports Illustrated, Vincent Laforet and many other photographers have used this technique.

This movement of the lens allows adjusting the position of the subject in the image area without moving the camera back; it is often used to avoid convergence of parallel lines, such as when photographing a tall building.

However, many PC lenses require a small aperture setting to prevent vignetting when significant shifts are employed.

The mathematics involved in tilt lenses are described as the Scheimpflug principle, after an Austrian military officer who developed the technique for correcting distortion in aerial photographs.

[4] In 1973, Canon introduced a lens, the TS 35 mm f/2.8 SSC,[2] with tilt as well as shift functions.

Other manufacturers, including Venus Optics Laowa, Olympus, Pentax, Schneider Kreuznach (produced as well for Leica), and Minolta, made their own versions of PC lenses.

When the image plane is not parallel to the subject, as when pointing the camera up at a tall building, parts of the subject are at varying distances from the camera; the more distant parts are recorded at lesser magnification, causing the convergence of parallel lines.

To allow infinity focus, the adapter includes optics that multiply the lens focal lengths by 1.5.

Leica is currently providing the TS-APO-ELMAR-S 1:5,6/120 mm ASPH lens for its new S-System of digital SLRs.

[11] Minolta offered the 35mm f/2.8 Shift CA lens for its manual focus SR-mount cameras in the 1970s and 1980s.

The lens was unique among perspective-control lenses in that, rather than offering a combination of tilt-and-shift, Minolta designed the lens with variable field curvature, which could make the field of focus either convex or concave (essentially a three-dimensional, spherical form of tilt).

In 2016, Nikon added the PC NIKKOR 19mm f/4E ED extra wide angle view lens with a magnification factor of 0.18 and 25 cm focus distance.

[14] The mechanisms providing the tilt and shift functions can be rotated 90° to the left or right so that they operate horizontally, vertically, or at intermediate orientations.

In Pentax high-end DSLRs (K-7, K-5, K-5 II, K-5 IIs and K-30) the shake reduction hardware unit can be manually adjusted in the X/Y direction to achieve a shift effect with any lens using the Composition Adjust function in the menu system.

Schneider-Kreuznach offers the PC-Super Angulon 28 mm f/2.8 lens that provides shift movements, with preset aperture control.

The Sinar arTec camera offers tilt and shift with the full range of Sinaron digital lenses.

The PoF can also be oriented so that only a small part of it passes through the subject, producing a very shallow region of sharpness, and the effect is quite different from that obtained simply by using a large aperture with a regular camera.

The DoF is zero at the apex, remains shallow at the edge of the lens's field of view, and increases with distance from the camera.

When it is desired to have an entire scene sharp, as in landscape photography, the best results are often achieved with a relatively small amount of tilt.

Shift is a displacement of the lens parallel to the image plane that allows adjusting the position of the subject in the image area without changing the camera angle; in effect the camera can be aimed with the shift movement.

The lens can also be shifted in the opposite direction and the camera tilted up to accentuate the convergence for artistic effect.

Because of the simple optical design, there is significant curvature of field,[20] and sharp focus is limited to a region near the lens axis.

But in many cases, effective use of tilt for selective focus requires a careful choice of what is sharp as well as what is unsharp, as Vincent Laforet has noted.

One advanced technique, Smallgantics, is used for motion-pictures; it was first seen in the 2006 Thom Yorke music video "Harrowdown Hill", directed by Chel White.

[31] Artist Ben Thomas's series Cityshrinker extended this concept to miniature faking major cities around the world, his book Tiny Tokyo: The Big City Made Mini (Chronicle Books, 2014),[32] depicts Tokyo in miniature.

Tilting the camera upwards results in a perspective effect that causes the top of the building to appear smaller than its base, which is often considered undesirable.

Shifting can similarly be used to photograph “around” an object, such as a building support in a gallery, without producing an obviously oblique view.