I continue to use my tilt-shift adapter for DSLR, and now I explore the limits of the system. Below is the watch, at a very narrow angle, shoot by using Rodenstock Rodagon APO 80mm F4 lens at aperture set to F16.
Watch photography using tilt-shift DSLR
The lighting schema is simple: two narrow soft boxes on top, each highlighted top and the bottom part of the watch. There should not be direct reflection form a watch’s glass, as it immediately become dull and low contrast.
Front lest was tilted to about 25-30 degrees, the maximum I can get without lens projection circle going out from a sensor.
Lighting schema watch photography: using tilt-shift adapter fro DSLR
The focus plane was tilted accordingly (see the schema), produced image was exceptionally sharp across a whole watch’s dial. Something which you can’t never get without tilt-shift adapter or focus bracketing.
There are few trade-offs from such setup:
- Little increase of chromatic aberration and diffraction, increasing with the tilt angle.
- Manual operations focusing (aperture is manual as well) only available, done by moving the lens plate on and off from a camera. Which require precise gearing on the large format camera. (Cambo Master PC I use, is really good, very precise movements).
- Weight. The whole thing weights a lot, heavyweight head and tripod a mast.
Overall the system works very well for me, despite I never used Large Format cameras before.
Are there advantages using a tilt-shift adapter as opposed to faking a tilt-shift photograph? Here is an example of my fake tilt-shift: my image on a flickr
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admin Reply:
February 11th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
Antony,
It is easy to fake images taken with lens tilt, if you are reducing focus deepness. For example, this is what I’ve took with my tilt-shift adapter: Tilt-Shift adapter for 35mm Digital cameras: on the field test.
However, on a photo like watch, where focus was tilted to spread the whole object, there is no way you can fake it in Photoshop. Only multiple pictures (focus bracketing) can do the same.
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