I think another part of the illusion is having an abnormally low level of detail in the picture, so it seems like a toy or model to our eyes.
On a technical level, making things out of focus gets this automatically over most of the picture. The oversaturation also tends to make small details harder to see and notice. I haven’t looked at any full-sized versions of these, but I bet the illusion is less in a higher-resolution version (unless of course, the photographer intentionally lowered the resolution…)
And then the most successful of the shots are ones that, through accident or careful shot selection, don’t have much detail in the small in-focus central portion.
Based on the above descriptions of the technique I theorized that by isolating a portion of the “in focus” section of the image that it would look normal. And it does. I placed one hand over the other hand to leave a small opening between my thumbs and forfingers and looked at the little girl running in the first picture and she doesn’t look like a toy.
And on these examples, it looks like there’s no change in perspective (i.e. no distortion to modify perspective). It’s done mainly (or totally) by narrowing the depth of field and color saturation.
By the way, are there examples of doing this in reverse to make models look realistic? I imagine some of these techniques mentioned here are routinely used for special effects.
I’m still not convinced none of those pictures are models. Look at the “grass” in the second example with the train. That’s exactly the texture of the green granulate people use to make “grass” in models. Why would real grass look like that after some basic transformations?
Yes, those examples are fake tilt effects (horribly overdone, IMHO) in Photoshop. They are not true tilt-shift. They are trying to replicate the feel of tilt by narrowing the depth of field along an oblique axis, but don’t achieve exactly the same result. Still, it is that depth of field that mostly contributes to the model-like feel of the image.
Naita–that photo looks like classic tilt-shift to me. Note you can even see the people in the train. Look at the first three photos here (the last link in the OP). Do any of those look fake to you? You’re going to have to take my word on it, but that photographer is a very good friend of mine, and I’ve seen the whole sequence of shots from those series, and I assure you, it’s not fake.
I’ve got another aspect to discuss: the shadows seem to look wonky in some of these. The kinds of shadows you get outdoors on full-sized objects aren’t going to look the same as the shadows on miniatures indoors, right? Someone is playing games with that too I’d say.
I’m not sure how, but he keeps pretty much everything in focus (he must use a tiny aperture, accepting a certain amount of diffraction blurring). The black-and-white ones are more convincing, to my eyes, probably due to the saturation effect mentioned.
Tilt and shift when used put the plane that is focused different that just parallel and flat on an opposite wall. To see the tilt effect hold a flashlight beam against a wall and tilt it. It will be an ellipse. This is used to correct distortion and make architectural photos have the buildings square. Usually. When these effects are used when the lens is wide open (gathering the most light with a lower f stop) there is very little of the subject that is in sharp focus. When only a center is in sharp focus and all the edges are blurry, we interpret that as a small object because it usually is a person or smaller for that kind of picture. Close the f stop way down to 64, like Ansel Adams did with his tilt/shift photos and everything is sharp. You can give mountains shapes that they don’t have and they still look real if you don’t overdo it. The mind interprets really sharp photos as real life large scenes. The mind also fills in colors in black and white photography.
When you look at an art photo you are no more seeing the real thing than looking at a musical score is listening to the real thing. It is an interpretation. And in this instance the camera has been used in such a way as to interpret the scenes for you as miniature scenes.
Shift is used for perspective control, not tilt. Tilt is used to change the plane of focus. (Unless I’m misunderstanding you.) Shift keeps the plane of focus the same. Tilt will not correct converging verticals and keep buildings square.
I’m still a bit puzzled by why shift lenses allow perspective correction.
Why does shifting the lens up an inch or so allow you to get the top of a tall building in shot any more than simply leaving the lens in position and raising the camera by an inch?
The easy way to think about shifts is this. In order to have vertical lines in the subject appear as vertical lines on the film plane, the film plane must be parallel to the vertical lines - i.e. the film plane must itself be vertical. If you tilt the camera to allow it to frame the top of the building the film plane is no longer vertical.
So what you need is a much wider angle lens, or for the same focal length lens, a much bigger film plane, so that when you keep the camera horizontal (and thus the film plane vertical) you include a wider scene, and thus include the top of the building. Now you don’t have a bigger film camera. But what you can do, is keeping the lens stationary, you can move what area of film you do have down relative to the lens, where it will intersect the image of the top of the building you desire.
You will note that this implies that the lens is actually capable of covering a much larger area of film than a conventional lens for that camera format needs to do. Indeed this is true, shift lenses are significantly more expensive, and contain a lot more glass, because they are in effect designed to cover a much larger image area than the format of the camera would suggest.
So to summarise, a shift lens is allowing the film to sample a sub-section of the image that the lens forms. The easy way to use a shift lens is to keep the camera dead level, and then think, not in terms of shifting the lens, but of shifting the film behind the lens. Of course, except for very close up work, whether you shift the camera relative to the lens or the lens relative the the camera makes no difference.
Just wanted to thank everyone for the answers so far, especially for the additional photo & film examples. (The video linked by Machine Elf is especially amazing.) Lots of the tech stuff is going over my head, but I’m trying to take it all in.
