CS 194-26: Image Manipulation and Computational Photography

Final Project: Fake Miniatures & Vertigo Shot

Tony Pan, CS194-26-adn

Overview

For the final project, I chose to do two pre-canned projects: Fake Miniatures and Vertigo Shot. It was really interesting to work on these two projects, especially since effects like tilt-shift and the dolly zoom appear so often in photography and film. I thought it was pretty cool to mess around with tilt-shifting images on the simulated end, and experiement with FOV and zoom with a physical camera for the dolly zoom.

Fake Miniatures

Simulating tilt shift was fairly straightforward. It involved defining some focus plane on the image and increasingly blurring around the newly defined focus plane. This creates an effect simliar to what is commonly found in macro shots, where a subject is in focus against a blurred foreground and background. The resultant illusion from simulating tilt shift is that of the lens being very close to the subject, as well as the subject itself seeming to be miniaturized.

Aside from simply blurring, several additional changes can be made to even further accentuate the 'miniature toy' effect of tilt shift. Sharpening an image and increasing saturation both work quite well in giving tilt-shifted subjects a more toy-like appearance.
You can see the effects sets of images below, where the left image is the original and the right one has had the tilt shift effects applied. The first two images are mine, and the last two can be found here and here.

Bells & Whistles

Complex DOF

Because the simualted tilt shift uses a pretty simple vertical 'gradient' for its blurring, tall objects are often blurred near the top. While this may be desirable in some cases, one can create a more convincing tilt-shift effect by having a more complex dof region. To do so, one simply has to create a mask of a region in the image they would like to remain in focus. During the process of blurring the image, pixels inside this region are ignored. The end result is the output image has a more complex DOF region. Some examples can be seen below.

For this example, I made a mask of the foreground 'house' object. If examined closely, the left(unmasked) and right(masked) images have noticeable differences in their DOF regions. In the left image, the roof and cross are blurred as a result of the gaussian filters applied. However, the right image shows the roof and cross remaining in focus, a result of the object mask being applied.

This example also shows the effects of applying an object mask. When comparing both images it's clear that the rocket in the left image is progressively blurred, a result of the tilt-shift simulation. However, one could apply an object mask and create a complex DOF to achieve the result shown on the right image, in which the rocket stays in focus. Original image can be found here.

Stop Motion

Finally, I decided to try and create a stop motion like effect with a series of images. I took 75 images, at roughly 1 second intervals. Then, I applied the tilt shift blur and effects to each image and stitched them together into an animated gif.

Vertigo Shot

For this part of the project, I replicated the famous 'Dolly Zoom' first seen in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. The dolly zoom effect is achieved by steadily zooming in or out while adjusting the distance to a subject. The result is pretty striking, with the subject appearing stationary while the background elements appear to move towards or away from the viewer. The sequence of images and gif of the set of keys shows the effects of steadily zooming in while increasing distance to the subject. Similarly, the shots of the altoids container show the reverse effects of zooming out while decreasing distance. For each subject, I took 9 photos and sticched them into a gif. Images and gifs can be seen below.