Stacked Panorama from Lofoten Islands

I have redone this vertical panorama using PTGui which has done an excellent job aligning the images compared with Photoshop (http://pin-sharp.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/a-lofoten-islands-norway.html). I have held back on the colours to give more the feel of a soft Arctic afternoon sky. Not sure this will be the final image - still a bit of chromatic aberration to deal with from the shift lens giving a bit of a light halo on the mountain edge. I will try a horizontal panorama or two from the trip before returning to this one

Å, Lofoten Islands, Norway

This image is from the very tip of the Lofoten islands, a place called Å, being the last letter of the Norwegian alphabet. The image is a vertical panorama, photomerged in Photoshop. It comprises four images using the shift lens in raised and lower position and with two images for the central position focusing on the foreground and background, respectively. The images have not quite aligned in Photoshop - I will need to redo at some stage more carefully or use a better merge software - any suggestions.

Greenwich Shifted and Tilted

At the beginning of our day in Greenwich, I used the Tilt and Shift lens. By mistake I had the barrel of the lens in the wrong orientation when taking a view of Canary Wharf (the barrel has to be rotated for portrait orientation shots) which gave a tilt to the plane of focus so it is horizontally through the centre of the image. I corrected this for the next shot but, in fact, rather like the effect in the first image. I can see why it is called the toy town lens. Tilted shots inside Canary Wharf, 

 a  shifted image of the Painted Hall  and a bit of both for the Chapel at the Naval College

Kings College Cambridge

Images taken with the 24mm Shift lens showing the quality of image possible with this lens. It is a difficult lens to use off a tripod as it is manual focus and exposure.

Ely Cathedral

 I took my Tilt and Shift 24mm lens for an outing to Ely Cathedral yesterday with our visitors from Guernsey. The dull light helped to allow a balance of windows and interior light. These images needed no perspective correction. A tricky lens to use but helped by the live view facility on the Canon 5D as it is totally manual.

Devon Woods

I spent a very enjoyable day photographing in various woods today. Thanks to Susan Brown for showing me round and lunch. I was practising with my Shift lens ready for a trip to Wengen for the alpine flowers later. The first picture is taken with the 24mm end of the 24-70mm lens; the second with the shift lens showing the relative shift of the fern compared to the background. The other images are also using 24mm Shift lens except for image 6, which is the 200mm end of the 70-200mm lens, and the last two taken with 50mm macro.

8.30 to Toy Town

Images taken with the Tilt and Shift lens showing the Toy Town effect you get with its narrow plane of focus. The lens was shifted and tilted for the second image.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh Day

The first stop for us on our C R Mackintosh tour was the Willow Tea Rooms. There are two parlours , one in Black and white and one in shades of purple and pink.

We then visited the School of Art. A very tall building so I was pleased to have my Shift lens.

The door panels made a work of art on their own (reversed as mirrors)

Tilt and Shift in Northampton

As the weather was pretty uninspiring today, I decided to give one of my under-used toys an outing. By using the lens shifted sideways with some tilt you can get some candid shots with only the subject sharp.

Shift lens

Taken with 24mm shift lens - f22 and 2 second exposure using manual exposure and manual focusing - back to the old days! It certainly slows down photography but is very relaxing when there is plenty of time for those snaps!!

Using Shift and Tilt Lens

Tried out my Canon Tilt and Shift lens on the beach huts at Wells.


On the left, the beach huts when taken without any shift appear to lean backwards as they are taken from below

With the lens shifted, the verticals are corrected and the beach huts are now upright and photo appears to be taken from a ladder at the height of the decking.