CS 194-26 Final Project Eric Linxie

Vertigo Shot/Dolly Zoom

To take the vertigo shot, I used my Canon Rebel SL1 dslr with a Tamron f2.8 17mm-50mm to take pictures. I started as close to my subject as possible using the lowest focal length, 17mm. My lens has four numbers representing the focal length it will be when I turn the zoom to that number. The numbers were 17mm, 24mm, 35mm and 50mm. I tried getting the subject within a defined area in my viewfinder, so when I stepped back, I know what size my subject should be when I changed my focal length. My viewfinder had certain boxes notched on that I used to set my defined area. Once I got my defined area, I took my picture with the subject inside that area. Then I stepped back and set the focal length to the next number, got the subject inside the defined area, and took another photo. I repeated this until I got to the last focal length, 50mm.

Some problems that I encountered were trying to accurately get the object into the area, and my lens zoom breaking. Despite my best efforts, since I am only human, and I did not have a tripod on me, the subject between pictures in the sequence did not stay in the same place, or even same position. The change is minor, but with a tripod or a better way or a better way of keeping the same size, the quality of the sequences would have been better. Another problem was that my zoom lens broke, so that I could no longer zoom at a focal length besides 50mm. There were problems as I was taking the pictures, as it would be hard to zoom from 35mm to 24mm. I found out in the metadata that the camera recorded the wrong focal length. At the end, I could no longer take any more dolly zoom pictures, as it requires a zoom lens.

Another problem in the Hearst Mining Circle Picture is that when I took the Dolly Zoom picture, I took it at different elevations, since I was shooting on a slight hill. This might explain why it might not look like other Dolly Zoom pictures.

I added animations of each of my Dolly Zoom sequences for Bells and Whistles

Fake Miniatures

For fake miniatures, given an image, I take two points from that image, and use these points to make a horizontal or vertical mask representing a synthetic depth of field (DOF). To simulate a DOF, I use this mask to combine the image with a gaussian-filtered/blurred version of itself, where the clear version is pasted in the white part of my mask, and the blurred picture is placed where the mask is black. To make the combination blend better, I blurred the mask with the gaussian filter too.