Results
Pole in the Vineyard
Tree in the Park
Happy while Wine Tasting
In this project, I duplicated a famous in-camera effect: the dolly zoom. This camera movement is also known as the "Vertigo shot".
To duplicate this effect, I used a DSLR of the following model: Canon EOS 20d with 18-55mm lens. I took my photos on a weekend trip to Napa. These photos were taken while we were wine tasting at Frog's Leaf vineyard.
For each of the two sequences, I picked a subject to focus on and took pictures at different FOV as I changed distance from the subject. More specifically, I zoomed in towards the subject as I moved further away from the subject.
Initially, I was having trouble getting focal objects to look consistent across images because of how the sunlight reflected upon irregular objects at varying distances. I found out that using objects with simple surfaces and shapes (like the pole and tree) yield the best results. Whereas using people and plants as the focal object had a larger visual error produced due to the following reasons: 1. Reflection of sunlight at different distances and 2. Shift due to unsteady camera seemed noticeably larger compared to the simple objects.
In this project, I created fake miniatures by simulating the effect of selective focus cameras, also known as Tilt Shift. This effect is achieved by selecting a focus plane by masking a region of interests and applying a blurring filter to the rest of the image. This narrows the perceived depth of field in the scene, creating the illusion that the lens is very close to the subject.
1. First I specified the area to stay in focus through ginput.
2. Next, to simulate depth of field, I created a Gaussian stack of blurred images - The image in the 1st level is the least blurred (lowest sigma or Gaussian filter only applied once). The image in the 4th level is the most blurred (highest sigma or Gaussian filter applied 4 times).
3. I used different Gaussian filtered images to construct the resulting image, based on how far the area was from the focus line - The further the area from the focus line, the greater the blur.
4. Lastly, I increased the saturation of the resulting image to increase the illusion of a miniature by manipulating hsv values.
Six Flags in New Jersey
Downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Medellin, Colombia
Cusco, Peru
Train Station in New York
I found that the 'fake miniature' effect is most evident with images that are taken from an higher perspective (most of the images above) as opposed to same level as the objects in focus (Train Station in New York image). The effect is also more evident in images that have a busy background (like buildings) as opposed to when the background is just the sky.
