Kipon is one of the worlds’ leading companies that makes lens adapters. However, the company also makes lens adapters with tilt & shift capabilities. The primary purpose of lens adapters is to allow you to use lenses from one brand of lens and attach them to a body from a different manufacturer. Kipon and other manufacturers have made adapters even more useful by including features that allow for greater creative control. The first additional feature was variable ND filters, which gave videographers finer incremental control over image exposure as well as letting us shoot with a normal film shutter speed while maintaining a wide aperture. The next innovation from the adapter manufacturers was tilt and/or shift adapters. Some adapters were able to perform shifts, which is when you are able to slide the lens vertically or horizontally to shift the image without moving your camera position, and some were able to perform tilts where you rotate the lens so that the lens’ focal plane is at a different angle than the image plane. This tilting allows for more selective focusing and shallower depth of field. Lastly, there were adapters that did both and I am going to single out Kipon here because I am familiar with their Kipon Tilt-Shift Lens Mount Adapter from Nikon F To Sony Nex Body.
So what situations call for tilt shift photography? Architecture photography is probably the most common use of this branch of photography. Being able to shift the lens horizontally instead of tilting the entire camera and lens in order to get the entire image takes images of buildings that look like they are leaning backwards and makes their lines much straighter.
The image below utilizes both a tilt as well as a shift. The vertical lines of the buildings in the image are due to the shift of the lens to reduce the distortion. The depth of field which stretches from the middle-ground by the trees through to the taller white tower on the left-hand side of the image is due to the tilting of the lens.
Tilt shift can also be used to make real locations look like a scale model. The effect of this focus manipulation leads to a macro like look which can normally only be achieved when very close to an object. And as this scene below is an actual block of buildings, the end result is that the eye is tricked into thinking it is a scale model.
One of the benefits of tilt-shift photography is that you can stop down your lens to really get the area you want in focus sharp and still get that dreamy bokeh. It is also great when used subtly and adds a certain ethereal quality to the image. This type of usage is great for product photography as well as food photography. And the great benefit of using an adapter is that you can get this effect with all the lenses you already own so you can try out different focal lengths with this effect to see which combination you like best.
