Tilt-shift lenses are a lot of fun. When you are above cities or towns, you can make them look like they are a toy model of the area. I shot this during a Great Reno Balloon Race - Media Day, when I was hired to get some marketing photos for the event organizer. Flying in a hot air balloon was a great way to get many of these type of toy photos of Reno. This bight and cheery shot was one of my favorites.
Shot on a Canon 5D Mark II with a 24mm Canon tilt-shift lens. The aperture was f4.0, a wider aperture can increase the softness on the top and bottom of the photo enhancing the toy look. The shutter speed was 1/640 second, nice and fast to deal with the moving balloons. The ISO was 50.
If you've never seen a tilt-shift lens, it has knobs on it that help you tilt the lens up or down to help create this effect. It also can help straighten vertical lines when shooting architectural type photography but I tend to like it best for this more fun purpose. Here is a look at Canon's 24mm tilt-shift lens on their website Phone editing apps can create a similar look but I find it a lot more fun to use the proper lens for the job.
Thank you for looking and reading!
Scott Thompson
Scott Shots Photography
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