CS194-26 Final Project: Vertigo Shots and Fake Miniatures

By: Jia Ze Yu

Date: 2018-12-12

Vertigo Shots

The Vertigo Shots or the Dolly effect is achieved by zooming a zoom lens to adjust the angle of view while the camera dollies (moves) toward or away from the subject in such a way as to keep the subject the same size in the frame throughout.

Shooting the Pictures

I used a Canon EOS 500D DSLR with a 18-200mm zoom lens to capture these images. I first zoomed all the way out and stood close to the subject. I then took steps backwards while zooming in gradually. Before capturing an image, I made sure the subject is of almost the same size by taking advantage of the 3x3 grid in the viewfinder. I then join the sequence of images into the following GIFs.

Fake Miniatures

Miniature faking, also known as diorama effect or diorama illusion, is a process in which a photograph of a life-size location or object is made to look like a photograph of a miniature scale model. Blurring parts of the photo simulates the shallow depth of field normally encountered in close-up photography, making the scene seem much smaller than it actually is.

Defining region to blur

I first implemented a baseline program that takes in a point to define a region to blur.

Irregular Masks

As you can see, the regular boxy mask does not work well in creating a natural depth of field effect. Hence, I further implemented a part that takes in an irregular mask to blur and the results are as follows.

Images from the Internet

Images taken by me