143. Freelens Fisheye

143. Freelens Fisheye

Okay so its not a fisheye lens its a Canon 28mm f1.8 USM on a 60D (For the geeks out there this makes it act like a 44.8mm due to the the aps-c size sensor)

With the lens open right up at f1.8 you get a pretty shallow depth of field, but what do you do if you want to try and be even more of an extremest..

I was looking at cheap home made alternatives to tilt shift lenses this evening and I came across the term freelensing which I'd never heard before. Its a pretty simple concept and you can get some fairly unique results pushing the depth of field past the normal boundaries of the lens.

What you do is you put the camera into manual mode, take of the lens and hold it just in front of the camera body*. You can then tilt the lens left or right and up or down to alter the focal plane and achieve a shallower than shallow depth of field.

I can see from even a tiny bit of research that freelensing is a common practice and widely known about. But I hadn't heard of it before this evening so the chances are there may be a few people who see this who haven't heard of it or tried it either. So give it a go and share your ideas and results with me!

*Obviously be careful not to stick your finger into the mirror mechanism and watch out for dust etc.