Re: Effect of perspective control lens without the cost

On 2012-01-15 17:52:27 +0000, Frederick Williams said:

Perspective control lenses are, I fancy, rather expensive. Is there
software available that will allow the digital manipulation of jpg's to
get the same effect? I suspect that the answer is 'yes', but does it do
the job well, and is it free?

It depends... Three situations spring to mind:

1. If you are referring to a tilt/shift lens for the sole purpose of keystone elimination then the software is cheaper than the lens. The downside to this method is reducing the number and quality of JPEG pixels left after correction, but it's not necessarily a show-stopping limitation. I've no idea if the software is free, but I do wish my bought software included this feature.

2. Requiring a tilt/shift lens for the purpose of, say, maximizing depth of field for someone playing the piano, taken at an oblique angle: no software can possibly help.

3. Software is cheaper than buying a tilt/shift lens solely for the purpose of creating some of the weird perspective effects that are becoming quite popular. Don't know if the software is free, but I've seen effects that go far beyond the limits of perspective control lenses. I didn't like the effects, but have to say I was very impressed (although not impressed enough to save the URLs for future reference such as this). The "miniature effect" is currently popular and is included as a feature on some recent cameras.

Caveat: For those who earn good money from their photography, hardware is usually cheap compared to the cost of time spent researching then learning how to use possibly equivalent software.

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