If you are into product photography, you definitely want to learn more about shift lenses. This is basically a way that allows you to keep a number of items in focus for your shot. It is also perfect for blurring some parts of your image while focusing on other parts. Most landscape and architecture photographers prefer this function because of the vast benefits that it portrays.
- With the shift control, you can easily wide panoramas by simply switching a number of images together. The best thing about it is that it does not change it’s perspective while shooting. This is mainly because, the sensor of the camera does not move. This in turn eliminates any distortion whatsoever that would otherwise be found if you were using a wide-angle lens.
- When you need to make sure that all the vertical lines in your photo are straight, it is also the best time to use shift lenses. Normally without the shift lenses, your images would have distorted lines making the photos look unrealistic. If you were taking a photo of a building for example, it may look like it wants to fall down instead of being straight on the ground. The shift lenses create a great difference in maintaining the posture and vertical lines of your images.
- When using shift lenses, you are able to control the centerline of the image. You can easily put it where you feel it fits perfectly and don’t change the camera angle. Different cameras shift to different millimeters.
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However far or close you are to your subject does not matter when using shift lenses. The only determining factors include:
- The height of your target above the level of your eyes
- The height of the film beyond the centerline
- The focal length of the lens
With these in mind, you can easily predict the type of picture you will get with a given shift lens.
- Shift lenses may lose some light in the corners when shift is applied to the maximum. This is mainly due to the optical properties. For this reason, if you use filters they may somewhat be visible in the corners of your image. However, there is a way that the loss of light can be fixed by using smaller apertures. However, if you reduce the amount of aperture, the filters will become even more visible. If this happens, you may need to increase your distance from the target and slightly reduce the shift. Another way that you can use to eliminate this problem is by using an auxiliary filter holder rather than screw-on ones.
- Shift lenses are also perfect for all weather conditions. As long as the shift setting is perfect, you will get your shots the way you want them. They are not affected by light or even wind.
- They are perfect for shift and stitch. This is whereby you take your camera and put in in stationary position and then shift the lenses either, side to side or up and down. When you do this for two shots, you can easily get two images that easily and perfectly stitch together to give an even higher resolution image. What’s more, the angles also come out wider improving the overall look of the image.
- Without a shift lenses, you can be sure that you will experience many problems with verticals. However, when you have a shift lens, it is important to ensure that the camera is level and shift the lens upwards so as to produce shots that do not have convergence.
Conclusion
Many people use cameras that don’t have shift lenses hence they have to get an editing tool to make the necessary changes. However, with shift lenses, the hassle of getting another software to produce perfect shots is immediately eliminated.