About tilt-shift and Lensbaby – Korwel Photography

The first time I saw a collection of tilt-shift photos in AirVenture 2009 program book, I was convinced it was a collection of Lensbaby images. After reading this blog post, and then visiting Tiltshiftmaker web page and their Flickr gallery, I am not so sure anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to convince anybody one way or the other. I am just curious to see side by side, how similar it really is.
So, let’s make an experiment. The first photo is taken with Lensbaby composer, f/5.6, no tilting, just straight lens.

The next image was made with different camera, different focal length, but cropped similarly and run through tilt-shift software on the web page. There are few sliders, you can control strength and gradient of effect, but… the area is rather limited to horizontal line. Fun, but a bit disappointing… and limited compared with a real thing.

For the record- I had polarizer on both lenses, and images were done just few minutes apart…. The exif data was stripped when I run the photo through the tilt-shit maker, but the image was taken with Nikon D40x, ISO 200, 31 mm focal length, f/4.2 at 1/640 sec.
Bottom line? No bottom line, really. Draw your own conclusions.
But, I do have my Lensbaby and take it with me every time I go out shooting. Sometimes it is fun, sometimes- a frustration.

Jessica says:

August 31, 2009 at 9:07 am

I used to really love the tilt-shift look, but now I see it used all the time, for portraits and wedding photography, and often it’s just distracting.

I love my Lensbaby, however. I think it looks much nicer than a regular tilt-shift lens. (Plus, it’s way cheaper!)

SG says:

August 31, 2009 at 2:47 pm

The miniature effect from tilt-shift lens or software works better when there are subjects at different distances in the photo.

Photos with a lot of sky or water are difficult to work with in this case because there is not a lot of detail in those areas to gives a changed focus effect.

I don’t think Lensbabies compare exactly to real tilt-shift lenses, because the out of focus area in the lensbaby is always a radial blur, and it’s tricky to get the miniature effect this way.

sklep z odzieżą says:

October 10, 2010 at 4:28 pm

Nice post. Thanks for sharing. Keep it up!