Camera Lens Experimentation
There’s a simple practical reason I venture beyond traditional lenses –
The easiest way to get a picture that moves you is that it’s captured from a unique viewpoint.
A unique lens gives you a unique perspective instantly – it’s then just down to you to take the photo.
Isco Ultra Star 2x Anamorphic – 70mm
Canon TS-e 24mm II
Canon 6D with Magic Lantern
Anamorphic Lens
Isco Ultra Star 2x Anamorphic – 75mm
Telephoto perspective with wide angle composition
I started with anamorphic Lenses after understanding that I like long telephoto lenses because of the perspective it gives, however I shoot a lot of cars which makes it difficult to fit everything in frame since they are comparatively ‘long and short’.
Before
A 2x Anamorphic lens captures 1x height and 2x width
After
Desqueezed in Photoshop and reprocessed in Lightroom
Modern anamorphic lenses are generally rare and expensive – reserved for high production value cinematic filming – but the lens I am using is from old 35mm film cinema projection.
The main trade-offs with this set up are:
- Double Manual Focus: Both main lens and anamorphic element needs to be focused as the lens’ original purpose was to project film video onto indoor static environment, not changed dynamically.
- No aperture control (f/2): Wide aperture means lower optical contrast and limited shutter speed combinations
- No in field preview: Not being able to see the result and accurate composition of your photo until you get home and process in Photoshop.
- Resolution: Losing 50% of your vertical pixels through desqueezing, which is a trade off some detail and makes large format printing limited.
However the results speak for themselves – each photo inherently has a dramatic and cinematic style due to it’s unique aspect ratio and fast DoF fall off.
Tilt Shift Lenses
Telephoto subject isolation with wide angle composition
Tilt shift lenses are traditionally used in architecture photography to correct perspective distortions.
I use my TS-E 24mm as a walkabout lens as it allows me to have the luxury of an ultrawide lens while allowing me some artificial DoF control to isolate subject and setting (which is not available on traditional wide angle lenses)
Miscellaneous photos
