When trying to capture a tilt-shift photo it’s all about perspective.Īny shift in your camera lenses separates the center of perspective. (This explains why our photos are typically rectangular rather than round.) Light traveling down the lens image circle will be captured and cropped thanks to the image sensor. The effect alters the link between the image sensor and the lens image circle. Macro and nature photographers have most use for tilt. People doing architectural photography have most use for shift. They have a lot of optical tricks that could not be otherwise produced digitally, and that’s why tilt shift lenses are a must in certain landscapes, architectural and product photography. Once again, t ilt shift lenses allow you as a photographer to go beyond the normal restrictions of DOF and perspective. These special lenses project an image circle much larger than other typical lenses. The shift feature gives the lens an optical shift room when compared to the image sensors. (This is evident when using a wide aperture, where the area to the right and left fall out of the focus range. There is a vertical focus plane on the frame meaning everything at the back and the front will remain in focus. The interaction of the lenses can be adjusted by tilting the lens from right to left, affecting how they interact.

That way if you focus the lens 6 feet away, everything surrounding the object checks into sharp focus.Īn object 5 feet away under focus will remain so alongside everything surrounding it. The typical lens, sensor plane, and focus plane can be lined in parallel. It might sound quite complicated but it simply means you have room to adjust the sharp focus. The tilt-shift capability is entirely based on the Scheimpflug principle that helps minimize or maximize its in-depth photography. Let’s dissect the terms “tilt” and “shift” to understand how these perspective-control lenses work.

Lightroom tilt shift focus