DSLR Photography Forum

I took my Arsat 35mm tilt/shift lens out for another bash yesterday. I'm still in the "getting to know you" stage with this lens, so it was just a case of keeping my eyes open looking for anything remotely interesting to shoot.

As it happened, I noticed some smoke near a road I was driving on. So I pulled over and went looking for it's source. It was just a small fire in some scrub-land that looked like it had been lit by kids after school. I arrived just as the fire brigade arrived, so I thought it was a good shooting opportunity because there were still plenty of flames visible. They possibly thought I was the media!

I then went to visit some friends who live near Curtain uni. After leaving them and driving past the uni I stopped to grab a few more shots.


1. The big fire truck stayed out near the road with most of the firefighters. The fire was small enough to be fought with just a little 4WD and two men.


2. This was taken with a Canon EF 135mm f/2L instead of the Arsat lens.


3. Another shot with the 135, given a slightly different colour treatment.


4. The fire was on the edge of a small lake. This shot is from around the lake a bit.


5. Down at the old Canning Navy Cadet building that seems almost derelict now.


6. Hockey training at the Perth Hockey Stadium at Curtain Uni.


7. Part of the Business School at Curtain Uni I believe.


8. A bus-stop outside Curtain Uni.

I must admit I love using this lens to control a shallow DOF. It might be a bit gimmicky but I also think when used well it can be really effective. These shots are just me practicing and getting used to the lens, finding out what works and what doesn't.

Very nice work Adrian - especially considering how you are shooting everything manually with that lens.

Great series Kombi, really like the different effects you get with this lens, depending on the distance to the subject.

Great stuff, I love no. 5 especially, but the fire series is also very good. some look a little like stills from a movie.

no1 reminds me of what people do with lense babies too, did you edit the blur in postprocessing or was it as even?

uli

Excellent work! Very inspiring.

The first one is my favourite! But #5 isnt to far behind, love the composition.

Great work.


/Paul L.

Thanks
They are just snapshots, but its fun wandering around looking for trouble

Uli, there were no additional blurring effects done in PP, only colour/exposure tweaks.
You're right about the similarity to lensbabies - it's exactly the same principle. The flexible lens body on a lensbaby combines tilt and focus controls (and a bit of shift I'd imagine) into one. It makes it quick and simple to adjust everything at once, but difficult to be accurate or change one aspect without changing the others as well.
Getting a good focus on the subject is the biggest challenge with this lens on a non-full-frame camera (and a lensbaby even more so I'd imagine). Some people use Angle Viewfinders and change the Focus Screens on their cameras to make it easier to manual-focus. So far I've just been doing a lot of focus bracketing (and chimping to check focus). Simply take a few shots of the same subject and re-focus before each shot, going from focusing slightly in front to focusing slightly behind the subject. One of them usually comes out the way you want it. I'm glad I'm shooting digital with this lens!

One thing I have noticed is just how useful 35mm can be as a focal length on a 1.6 crop factor camera. It makes me want to use my Sigma 28mm f/1.8 more often than I do.

Next thing I want to try are some portraits with it.

Thanks for sharing your picture, Adrian. They are great example of what you can get with this lens...