Kevin Thom Photography Blog » tilt shift http://blog.kevinthom.com Tips, thoughts and ideas about the world of photography Sun, 08 Jan 2012 19:47:29 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Little New York http://blog.kevinthom.com/2011/07/little-new-york/ http://blog.kevinthom.com/2011/07/little-new-york/#comments Tue, 19 Jul 2011 05:05:50 +0000 Kevin Thom http://blog.kevinthom.com/?p=1671 Similar Posts
  1. Me and my twisty lens in New York City
  2. Coney Island in the sun
  3. Toy car
]]> (Video: Watch this video on the post page)

Millions of tiny dramas are happening every day in New York City. Turn your lens in any direction, focus on even the smallest fragment, and you’re bound to capture them.

Shot with Canon 5D MkII with Hartblei 65mm f3.5 Super-Rotator. You can view it in HD on Youtube.

Music: Life with Lights by Ballerina Black – from www.musicalley.com

Similar Posts

  1. Me and my twisty lens in New York City
  2. Coney Island in the sun
  3. Toy car
]]> http://blog.kevinthom.com/2011/07/little-new-york/feed/ 1 Coney Island in the sun http://blog.kevinthom.com/2011/07/coney-island-in-the-sun/ http://blog.kevinthom.com/2011/07/coney-island-in-the-sun/#comments Fri, 15 Jul 2011 18:40:55 +0000 Kevin Thom http://blog.kevinthom.com/?p=1620 Similar Posts
  1. Toy car
  2. Me and my twisty lens in New York City
  3. Little New York
]]> Undoubtedly, one of Brooklyn’s most iconic locations is Coney Island. I had a day to kill earlier this week, so I decided to visit the park and boardwalk to take some pictures. I took the D train from Manhattan and just enjoyed the ride to the end of the line at Brooklyn’s southern tip. It was my intention to capture Coney Island’s very familiar scenes of classic  Americana in an unusual way. I mean, almost everyone’s seen pictures of the Cyclone and Wonder Wheel, even if they might not have known exactly what they were looking at, so I brought along a super-wide lens and my bendy tilt-shift 65mm f/3.5 Hartblei Super-Rotator to try to put a slightly different spin on things. The skies were clear and the air was a sweltering 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees F), which made roasting on the pavement waiting for the exact moment to shoot an exercise in sweat tolerance. However, it was a lot of fun finding ways to throw the focus across different planes with the Super-Rotator, and to identify novel abstract angles with the super-wide lens. The direct sunlight created some lovely hard contrasts and bright colors. I think the unique bokeh effects created by the tilt-shift help to communicate the almost comatose state of heat stroke that I was experiencing out there!

IMG_5442 IMG_5450 IMG_5452 IMG_5457 IMG_5462 IMG_5466 IMG_5468 IMG_5476 IMG_5479 IMG_5482 IMG_5488 IMG_5503 IMG_5515 IMG_5521

Similar Posts

  1. Toy car
  2. Me and my twisty lens in New York City
  3. Little New York
]]> http://blog.kevinthom.com/2011/07/coney-island-in-the-sun/feed/ 0 Toy car http://blog.kevinthom.com/2010/04/toy-car/ http://blog.kevinthom.com/2010/04/toy-car/#comments Wed, 14 Apr 2010 20:42:10 +0000 Kevin Thom http://blog.kevinthom.com/?p=1023 Similar Posts
  1. Me and my twisty lens in New York City
  2. Coney Island in the sun
  3. Bending your bokeh
]]>

Hartblei 65mm f3.5 Super-Rotator lens.

I had some fun today. It was a beautiful spring morning, and the parking lot at my building was mostly empty. I decided to play with my new car and my Hartblei Super-Rotator lens. I picked up this lens on eBay last year, but haven’t used it a lot. The Hartblei is an f/3.5 65mm tilt-shift lens that can rotate both tilt and shift segments 360 degrees. What does this mean? It basically means you can put together some pretty crazy focal planes.

Tilt-shift lenses are great at creating a “miniature” effect. It’s the perfect effect to make a fun statement about how small Pepper, my little MINI Cooper S is. I parked Pepper rakishly in the middle of the lot, and climbed the metal ladder to the roof of my building, because the tilt-shift miniature effect only really works if you’re shooting from a high angle.

Because the Hartblei is a completely manual lens, it doesn’t communicate with your camera body at all. The camera’s display told me that my aperture was f/00. I dialed in f/3.5 on the barrel of the lens, and then used the camera’s meter to determine the right shutter speed.

I shot a few different angles, experimenting with different combinations of tilt, shift, and rotation. I have to admit, it’s a bit hard for me to predict how the different tilts and shifts will affect the final image, but half the fun is in the trying.

In the end, I found the miniature effect to be pretty convincing. The unexpected planes of focus and unusual depth of field created some fascinating results, and made Pepper look like a die-cast metal toy.

pepper-toy pepper-toy-2

I have some more examples of this miniature effect in my photos from the bell tower in Xi’an, China.

Similar Posts

  1. Me and my twisty lens in New York City
  2. Coney Island in the sun
  3. Bending your bokeh
]]> http://blog.kevinthom.com/2010/04/toy-car/feed/ 6 Xi’an I get along just fine http://blog.kevinthom.com/2009/10/xian-i-get-along-just-fine/ http://blog.kevinthom.com/2009/10/xian-i-get-along-just-fine/#comments Sun, 18 Oct 2009 15:13:26 +0000 Kevin Thom http://blog.kevinthom.com/?p=363 Similar Posts
  1. Plotting my China trip
  2. Back in Shanghai
  3. Terra cotta warriors
]]> The thing that has struck me on this trip compared to my trip here two years ago is that there are a lot more young people out, looking good and having fun. The difference is striking. Youth are filling the streets, restaurants, stores. The cities are happening places, even on Sunday nights. Music throbs from every corner. People are drumming, dancing, bands play in the streets. Kids are spending what I can only imagine is boatloads of money. Except they don’t need boats, because all of that consumption is being directed towards products made right here in China: clothes, shoes, accessories, cars, jewelery, etc. Can you spell “future economic superpower?” I can: “C-H-I-N-A.”

Anyway, I’m not going to write a lot tonight. I’ll just let the photos from today’s walks around Xi’an do the talking.

IMG_4202 IMG_4199 IMG_4194 IMG_4188 IMG_4180 IMG_4171 IMG_4162 IMG_4160 IMG_4153 IMG_4150 IMG_4042 IMG_4058 IMG_4057 IMG_4041 IMG_4077 IMG_4101 IMG_4129 IMG_4113 IMG_4062 IMG_4060 IMG_4224 IMG_4209 IMG_4259 IMG_4249

Similar Posts

  1. Plotting my China trip
  2. Back in Shanghai
  3. Terra cotta warriors
]]> http://blog.kevinthom.com/2009/10/xian-i-get-along-just-fine/feed/ 6 Me and my twisty lens in New York City http://blog.kevinthom.com/2009/08/me-and-my-twisty-lens-in-new-york-city/ http://blog.kevinthom.com/2009/08/me-and-my-twisty-lens-in-new-york-city/#comments Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:20:12 +0000 Kevin Thom http://blog.kevinthom.com/?p=158 Similar Posts
  1. Toy car
  2. Coney Island in the sun
  3. Little New York
]]> I took a little road trip down to New York City with my improv team to perform in the Del Close Marathon. I thought it might be a great opportunity to spend some time with my new friend, the Hartblei 65mm f3.5 Super-Rotator. It’s a tilt-shift lens that can rotate the tilt and shift independently 360 degrees. That’s a lot of twisting and shifting, and it can be a bit tricky to handle.

hartblei-super-rotator

It was a very hot and sticky weekend in Manhattan, and I had lots of opportunities to try the lens out. To me, the cool thing about a tilt-shift lens is its sometimes surprising depth of field effects. Because it essentially changes the plane of focus, you can throw focus in almost any direction. It feels like splashing focus across the frame like paint in diagonal slashes. Check out the focus on this shot of a carnival in Central Park.

whac

Focus is on the Whac-A-Mole tent in the distance, but also on the branch in the top-right corner, which can’t be more than 10 feet from me.

Here are a few more examples of fun focus effects that I created on the weekend.

Hailing toy-tower flatiron-harp

Good times. What I love about this lens is that it allows me to be very selective about what is highlighted in the photo. The rest of the photo is thrown out of focus in a silky smooth and beautiful way. Due to its hand-made Czech glass, images are sharp in the focus areas, and color transmission is great. I’ll be taking this lens to China with me in October. Stay tuned for more super-rotated images!

Similar Posts

  1. Toy car
  2. Coney Island in the sun
  3. Little New York
]]> http://blog.kevinthom.com/2009/08/me-and-my-twisty-lens-in-new-york-city/feed/ 1