Hey photo friends – Erik here. While I’m typically the video guy around these parts, I wanted to hop on the blog to quickly tell you about a piece of camera gear that I’ve been enjoying lately. I picked up a Tilt Transformer from Lensbaby about a month ago and it’s now a permanent piece of my walk-around photography kit. The Tilt Transformer allows you to mount your Nikon lenses to a Micro Four Thirds or Sony NEX camera and then swivel the Tilt Transformer around for some dramatic selective focus shots. Tilting the lens creates a “slice” of focus that can be adjusted vertically, horizontally, or diagonally, and the size of the focus slice can be adjusted by changing the aperture on the lens. It’s a great way to create tilt-shift style photography for a fraction of the price of a single tilt-shift lens.
Q: What is the benefit of a tilt or tilt/shift lens?
A: The benefit of a tilt (or tilt/shift) lens can be myriad, but mostly it’s incredibly effective at removing visual noise and focusing or drawing the viewer’s eye to the intended subject.
Use the image tabs atop this post to take a spin through a gallery of photos I shot with it and my Olympus E-P3 and see what I mean. Also take a peek at the Lensbaby site for more details.
v cool! I just switched to canon though, and as a food photographer this would be awesome. I like to shoot live and not do much post, and a $2000 tilt shift lens is out of my budget. any idea on how to make this work for a canon?
I believe you can get a similar effect with your Canon by using the Lensbaby Edge 80.
Loved your pics Erik!
What is different about it over using the Composer that allows you to define the sweet spot of sharpness and let the rest blur? (Other than allowing you to attach to a micro 4-3 camera of course…) just wonderin’
Looks more like the new Edge 80 Bren. A SLICE of focus versus the radial blur of the traditional LB.
Oh and I meant to say… this is for use on m 4/3 cams…. the Edge 80 is what you would use with your Canon gear to get the same slice of focus look.
Thanks, John – I realized it was for 4/3 cams, but the Edge 80 – I have to check into that one – I’m a little behind on all the new great stuff Lensbaby has come out with!
Anyone know if they might make these for full frame cameras?
Lensbaby makes lenses dedicated for dSLR’s. The Composer pro is my top choice for the every day walk around photographer
I have a Tilt Transformer for my Panasonic GH1 and have had some nice pictures out of it, the way you can skew the focus is amazing.
I think the issue with the Tilt Transformer on full frame or even APS-C DSLRs is that there isn’t enough room for the Lens and the adaptor because of the space occupied by the mirror box. You’d need to use something like the Lensbaby Composer that Sam has mentioned but this does not allow the use of other lenses.
love this thing, must have