Greetings. Couldn't get it together for Dave's theme so I thought I'd get to this one early.
I took this with an 85mm tilt/shift at f/11. Full tilt along the vertical axis. It's a head scratcher, but what that does is give you a central corridor of focus. At f/11 the focus corridor is wide enough to capture the whole band of light and long enough to focus both on infinity and about 10 feet at the bottom of the frame. Manually focusing with this tilt moves the focus corridor from left to right (very weird to get used to). This was rotated a bit on the crop so you might see the focus corridor starting at the bottom a little to the right to a little to the left at the top.
Topaz simplify to add definition to the edges.
Nik Color Efex Low Key to darken the water contrast to the light band.
NR to start, Sharpening to finish.
Never knew there was an 85 TS lens. (Canon or Nikon?) When I read how you did it in camera, it is very well done. It is almost like a ray of moonlight, and I like the rain(?) in the bg, and the central corridor of focus. It looks like it shifts the focus corridor just a bit to the right if this is not cropped?
Very nice -- I love the ethereal effect. Odd how there is a focus corridor and moreso how it lies on a slight diagonal like that. Have to run out and try this with my 17. Haven't had much chance to try the tilt, which is WAY sensitive, but hadn't noticed an edge softening.
Very good to have the explanation with this image. I know a big fat nothing about the tilt lens. I like the light glowing on the water but feel there needs to be something in the bkgd to be a focus point.
It seems that many users of tilt-shift lenses use them to achieve a larger in-focus area. Limiting the focused area like you did is a great application of the lens. I like the light on the water, and the depth that the change in separation of the ripples reveals. If Jackie hadn't mentioned what looks to her like possibly rain in the background, I likely wouldn't have thought much about it, but I think emphasizing it could add a feature that works well with the light in the water. When I tried that out, I decided to lighten the sky to provide some contrast between it and the water.
I, also, know nothing about tilt shift lenses, but I like the possibility of focusing only on part of the image. Your photo is a good example of that. I would like to see something in the background, or in the line of light, to grab my attention. Perhaps the white lines in the sky could be altered to just be over the light line in the water. I look forward to more images with this lens.
Thanks much for your comments. They are greatly appreciated.
Jackie, it's a Nikon T/S 85mm PC-E (Perspective Control - E mmm... I think maybe the ED glass (extra low dispersion)?, Electronic information delivery (settings find their way into metadata but this is a manual lens)?
Focusing with the tilt is odd because how the aperture is set will not only have an impact on dof but also on where (parallel to the tilt orientation) the focus will show in frame... the width of the focus corridor. I've shot some performers (music, dance) with it for fun, very tricky to get the focus right.... handheld with moving subject.
Dennis, I like the idea of the repost. Maybe just lightening the beams though. Does help to present more of a subject.
The T/S also can be rotated so that the axis of tilt can be placed in any orientation. There is a product that gives one the whole suite of movements (recognizable by the bellows). Uses medium format lenses for a large image circle to allow for the movements. One of these days...
Theme: Focused light
