This guy wanted to recreate a specific effect without spending tons of dollars. Mission accomplished. He documented it so that people like me, who enjoy both photography and “sticking it to the man” by building cheap alternatives to commercial products.

Very much win. I’m definitely going to build one of these. I remembered reading about using a plunger for this ages ago, but i immediately recognized the problems: Manual focus AND you’ve gotta hold the lens in place. Meh. Also, i was worried that lenses for 35mm would not have a wide enough angle of coverage, particularly the cheap DX lenses. The author overcomes this beautifully by using an old Medium Format lens, which will have a 6×6cm or so square of usable image.

Quit hatin.

Awesome hack!

I don’t disagree its a neat hack, and it did exactly what little he needed it to.

its just not a tilt/shift lens. My point is that just because you put together a neat homebuilt wheelbarrow doesn’t mean you get to call it a ferrari, even if the wheelbarrow works.

granted his design is a rather simple tilt lens, and doesnt have too much ability beyond that.

however, do you have to be so negative about it? its a pretty ingenious solution for what he wanted to do. – cheap as hell, too

great hack

The whole ‘making things look small’ is a side-effect :)

The next part of the project is to integrate a small racking mechanism to allow for shifting of the lens parallel to focal plane rather than perpendicular to it.

There is no shift, and no ability for combined perspective control.

actual tilt/shift lenses are designed to do a hell of a lot more than the silly overused trick of making things look like a macro shot by putting the lens off plane but on axis.
This can’t do anything but.

it may do what little he wants it to, but it isn’t a tilt/shift lens.

+$7 pipe coupling
+$3 T-mount adapter