DIY tiltshift lens
To continue meepging up the forums with "creative" stuff, here's the culmination of my effort into making my version of $1000 dollar lens using a 1 dollar/pound sink plunger and an old second hand defunct lens. plus, once you've cut the handle off the plunger you get an excellent meep plug.
The basic premise is to have a movable lens to shift the plane of focus, but to be able to do this on a 35mm camera, you need a lens thats made for a larger format so the image will still cover the whole frame when the lens is tilted, and a larger format lens has a different focusing distance so you need the bellows extension to get it to focus properly.
I didnt bother taking photo's of every step i took, as i went through 3 versions getting it right, and its simple enough anyway, here's a proper step by step guide done better by someone else
LINK
The best advice would be to not make the bellows part too short, as it will restrict movements and make it harder to focus properly, mounting the lens so the body of it actually sits inside the bellows is perfect. to get the rough length of bellows needed, hold the lens infront of the camera without another lens mounted on it and move it back and forwards until it's in focus in the viewfinder, this give's you a starting point for the length. i've made a kick meep pro diagram to help.
and here's how I did.
version 1 using a lens from an old folding camera, kind of worked, but found the lens wasn't good enough, other folding camera's have better lenses that can be used though:
version 2 using the same bellows part from V1, but with a medium format bronica lens, which didn't quite work due to the bellows part being too short:
version 3, which is probably the end product using a longer bellows and the bottom of cd/dvd spindles as backing/front plates:
its meeping huge compared to the camera, but big is good, and i may shorten the bellows by a couple of notches but it works and i can mount it on the camera body and use it in manual mode easily enough.
and a couple of examples already posted in the other thread
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godevilliv+
Mar08 '09
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I see you were thinking "green" by recycling the handle of that plunger. Jolly good decision, Mate.
This looks like a fun project to explore and experiment with. If you continue to make changes, update us with results so I can skip your screw-ups and rocket directly toward success.
It looks bulky and meepbersome. I don't have the battery pack for my camera and I'm willing to bet this would be a bit hard to handle without the extra camera body for grip. Have you tried shooting without the pack on?
Also, I see that you've covered up your rear ring on the lens (zoom or f-stop?) how to you adjust that while shooting?
Mar08 '09
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it is bulky, but its light and you kind of use it by having the camera body in your palms either side of it, and fingers around the edges of the frontplate, have a roughly drawn diagram to illustrate. having the battery pack doesnt really help either way.
i could knock off about 1/3 off the length without losing any functionality, and will probably get around to doing it soon, its only held together with electrical tape as the epoxy wouldn't bond with the plastic because i couldnt be bothered to keying the surfaces. i should have ordered the smaller diameter plunger, but its no big deal for me, something for others to take note of.
not too worried about the aperature ring, as a you're after a small depth of field anyway, and by moving the frontplate you change the amount of image thats in focus anyway.
Sep07 '10
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Nice info, but my meep hands always meep this meep up.
Sep07 '10
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While I appreciate the art form and using the camera for this effect, isn't it easily 'faked' in Photoshop? I wouldn't be surprised if it was a drop-down menu item filter at this point...
Sep07 '10
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You can use layer masks with a gradient fill, and then just use gaussian blur to fake it, but it just looks fake. what you can also do is setup an action in photoshop, and do a timelapse shoot and then batch process the action on the sequence of images then it looks like a miniature stop motion film thing when you process it into a movie file.
The more you know
Sep07 '10
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Coolness. I am confoosed and purplecksed by your black stopmotion photowitchcraft.
Can't wait to see some of your creepy-meep surrealistic work.
Sep07 '10
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Note taken.
Sep07 '10
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Please elaborate on the use of the plunger handle as a meep plug. Do you use some kind of anchoring device or leash on it? Do you find the vertical plastic seam irritating on your sphincter, or is this simply lube-dependent? Any problems with retention or does it pretty much stay put?
Sep08 '10
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You should use the tilt shift lens to take a super close up of the plunger handle in your meep, but make it b&w so as not to be a classes sack of meep.