The Sandpit from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo.
What is tilt shift Photography?
Tilt-shift photography is a type of photography in which the camera is manipulated so that a life-sized location or subject looks like a miniature-scale model.
The Sandpit ingredients:
- VFX artist Sam O’Hare – Aero Director
- Music by Human
- Nikon D3 digital SLR Camera
- Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 and Sigma 50-150mm f/2.8 lenses
- 35,000 stills shot at 4fps in DX crop mode
How was The Sandpit filmed/photographed?
I’ll let the maker; Aero Director/ VFX artist Sam O’Hare handle this one: “I did some initial tests a while back using a rented 24mm tilt-shift lens, which is the standard way to do this. However, after my tests, I found it made much more sense to do this effect in post, rather than in camera. Shooting tilt-shift requires a tripod, as it is very hard to stabilise afterwards, and gives less flexibility in the final look. I opted to shoot it on normal lenses, which allowed me options in the depth of field and shot movement in post. I used a tripod for the night shots, and my Gorillapod (which is much more portable) where possible, but many locations—like hanging over the edge of a roof or through a gap in fencing on a bridge– had to be shot hand held, and the inevitable wobble removed afterwards.
The footage was shot as raw NEFs, which I organised and colour graded in Adobe Lightroom. I always shoot raw, as it gives you so much more latitude when grading. These were then output as 720p jpg sequences and quickly stabilised to do the initial edit. Once the edit was mostly locked, all the final footage was re-output at full 2800px resolution, tracked, stabilised and the DOF effect and movement added in Eyeon Fusion, using Frischluft Lenscare. I output the final shots at 1080p. Although most shots stay with the basic tilt-shift effect, some have focus pulls, or more complex depth mattes were built up along with some paint work to allow buildings to drop out of focus next to the in-focus ground. This would not have been possible if I had shot using tilt shift lenses on the camera, which works best with relatively flat landscapes. New York City is anything but flat!”
Credits:
Chris Davies for showing me the video
Vimeo for providing the video
Sam O’Hare – Aero Director for creating the video
This entry was posted by Matt on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 at 12:52 pm and is filed under Film, Photography. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.