How To Shoot Tilt-Shift Photography?

A tilt-shift lens is valuable for photographers who capture architecture, landscapes images, or for the creative heads who wish to have superior control over their camera’s depth of field.

- Sanchit Mishra

What Is a Tilt-Shift Lens?

A tilt-shift lens (also called a perspective control lens) changes the orientation of a lens in relation to a camera’s sensor. When the lens tilts so that it is not parallel to the camera’s sensor, it changes the plane of focus and the depth of field. When the lens shifts, it re-centers the image entering your camera, allowing you to capture from what looks to be various vantage points without moving the camera.

What’s the Difference Between Tilt Control and Shift Control?

Tilt-shift lenses are manual focus lens that comes with a tilt control knob and a shift control knob, each knob has a different function.

• Tilt control: Tilting is a type of selective focus, controlling the part of an image that looks sharp by tilting the focal plane in relation to the sensor plane. The tilt function lets you focus on two subject’s different distances from your camera at the same time. You can also tilt the plane of focus in the same way as the subject’s plane in order to create a tremendous depth of field and bring the subject’s plane into a highly sharp focus; this is known as the Scheimpflug principle.

• Shift control: Shifting lets you frame your image without moving the camera by shifting the lens parallel to the image plane. The shift function cuts out distortion when capturing with a wideangle lens and corrects the vertical lines when capturing from a low or high angle.

5 Reasons to Use a Tilt-Shift Lens