Tilt-shift
A tilt-shift lens gives a lot of possibilities to play with perspective and sharpness, which can be really useful in landscape photography (for more information about tilting and shifting, see here). Unfortunately, they are also really expensive.... Since I did not want to empty my bank account before having experimented with the tilt and shift effects, I made a DIY version by using a Mamiya 645 45 mm lens. It's a lens which is used in medium format photography, which is perfect for this purpose for two reasons. First, it has a bigger image circle than a 35 mm format lens, which allows for a lot of freedom in movement. Second, it has a larger flange focal distance (which is the distance between the lens and the sensor) giving some space for shifting and tilting. Of course it's not as versatile and easy to use as a real tilt-shift lens, but it's the next best thing, and it's fun to build! Below is what it looks like.
My DIY tilt-shift lens (2015-01-03)
My DIY tilt-shift lens (2015-01-03)
[ normal || tilted ] ⇛ Ice crystals on a frozen river (2014-12-28)
[ normal || tilted ] ⇛ Sundsvall (2014-12-29)
[ normal || tilted ] ⇛ A forest (2015-01-03)
[ normal || shifted || tilted ] ⇛ A forest (2015-01-03)