Warm Welcome

....if the use of tilt lens was the tight thing to do here. There

has been NO Photoshopping in this image. Just used Canon DPP curves

to lift the image a bit as taken in very low light and heavy rain.

 

Lens used was the Mir 26b (45mm on medium format which I think works

out at equivalent 135mm on crop sensor Canon 10D) along with the

Arax tilt adapter to give 8 degrees of tilt to the right.

 

What I wonder is this - does the line of sharp focus from using the

lens tilt, and the resulting out of focus sides of the image, lead

you nicely to the door and the reflection on the path? Does it make

for a nicer image to look at than it would have been if the whole

image was in sharp focus? I'm trying to use the tilt for artistic

effect rather than just for the sake of it. For me, this image works

well, but I'd be interested in your thoughts.

 

Kind regards

 

Pete

Well Pete, here's my 2 cents worth. I find it disquieting when different elements of an equidistant plane are in and out of focus. It make the eye see "something's off," or disenhances the view. We expect out of focus to be out-of-field. Like I said, it's only 2 cents worth. Regards, Bernie

Bernie, I really appreciate your 2 cents and I'm actually pleased that the image has caused some mental discomfort that has resulted in you commenting on it - this is much better for me than for a picture to be ignored ;) I agree with you that there is some air of mental discomfort here, and now that I look at it more I can imagine drunkenly staggering up the path to the door before collapsing in a heap and feeling sick! The initial intention had been to draw attention to the warm and inviting doorway in an image that I think would otherwise have been pretty dull, but I see now that something else has happened. Your thoughts of disquieting seems about right, but I like that now. I will however reshoot this image with no tilt if the opportunity arises over the next few days, and see if it does anything different - I think though it'll be boring!

 

Thanks again Bernie!

 

Pete

First to your initial question: yes, I think the tilt lens does, indeed, draw the eye to the door and the path. But (there's always a but, isn't there?) given the warm, incandescent light and wood tones of the door, contrasted with the cold stones, I think my eye would have been drawn similarly even without the tilt lens. Since reading Bernhardt's and your comments, I've been looking to see if my eye finds the "unnatural" focus qualities disturbing, and for some reason that's not happening for me. Actually, the only nit I have is that I wish the door and the leaded glass in it were more in focus. I very much like the contrast of the warm, woody reflection upon the cold, wet, stone path, too. There's a lot to take in here, and I think you made an intriguing image. Regards, David

... since the composition (centered door, incandescent lighting, walkway leading directly to the door) inevitably demands attention immediately to the door. That being the case, the focus experiment with the tilt seems like an afterthought, and perhaps even a mistake. If you re-composed the image in such a way that the door was off center, right or left, and used the tilt to keep everything out of focus except the door and the walkway, we could actually see if it works well or not. Interesting idea, and I'll check back to see if you follow up on it.

David, many thanks for sharing your thoughts on this, and I'm pleased that it hasn't made you suffer mental discomfort. I see what you mean about the focus could be better. I found it very hard to focus sharply on the doorway given the very low light, and the fact that I was worrying about the rain (I later remembered one of my camera rain jackets was in the car!). I will try harder next time which may be this evening.

 

Pete

Dennis, your comments here are very valuable and I appreciate them. The use of the tilt lens was actually a forethought, only I rushed through the composition of the image and should have spent more time thinking about my objectives. You are spot on in saying that the eye would be lead straight to the door anyway with the composition as it is and I can see why the use of tilt may in fact have been erroneous if it's sole objective is to lead the viewer to the door. And in this case, that was the sole objective!

 

This is a shot that I will definitely re-do to see how it can be improved. After reading what Bernie has said I think the image does do something - i.e. possible evokes a feeling of uneasiness or discomfort - and I am quite happy about that, and if this had been mine initial objective then I would be very pleased. Hmmm, I have plenty to think about here - I'll keep this one, and try and take another that does what I originally wanted.

 

Many thanks again - you have all been most helpful.

 

Pete

... in looking at the shot, there appears to be an uneven fall-off of focus going left to right, which is certainly a function of the tilt. That would be a very interesting thing to experiment in your re-do of the shot. Do you lead to the point of focus with focus and more rapidly go out of focus, or the reverse. Anyway, just a thought.

Well, because of work I haven't had a chance YET to re-shoot, but I will this week.

 

Dennis, your suggestion is definitely something I'll look at with trying the tilt both ways to see which fall off of focus works best.

 

Fred, many thanks for adding valuable thoughts to the conversation. I have found out what the problem was with the focus, and it was definitely to do with trying to use the poor 10D screen in poor light and I ended up with the focus slightly too far to the right and I also left the image fairly soft in post processing. I have just this minute changed the focusing screen in the 10D for a split/prism combo one and I hope this should help a bit with the MF. The standard ground screen of the 10D is definitely hit and miss, and I'm sure I can make do without the AF marker points as I only ever use the centre point for AF anyway. We'll see how it goes this time!