I Tried Freelensing To Make Miniature-Like Pictures Of The City (12 Pics)

Freelensing is a photography technique that means you are holding the lens in front of an interchangeable lens camera. For first thought can be that "you'll have no focus!" or "dust on the sensor!" but actually, there is more about this. This will allow the photographer to create unique effects like the Lensbaby or professional Tilt-Shift lenses, which were too expensive for me back in 2013. So my only option for experimenting was freelensing. (And later to build something similar to Lensbabies.)

 

First of all, you need a large sensor camera (i used APS-C, 4/3, and m4/3 ones), and a lens that has a very different flange distance (I used an OM lens without bayonet on Canon camera, and Canon lenses on Olympus E-1 and E-PL1). This will allow the photographer to hold the lens before the camera, and tilt it. If you are hitting the sensor with the lens's focus plane partially, you'll get a tilt-shift-like miniature effect (and a lot of light leaking). Not so good, but as your lens is moving completely independent from the camera body, you'll see a lot of irrepeatable pictures because of focal plane distortions.

Later I built a simple interface for freelensing, for my m4/3 E-PL1 camera. It consists of an Olympus body cap, a Canon rear cap, connected with some wires, and covered with a lot of insulating tapes. Ugly, but allows the lens to move, and protects the sensor from dust and leaking light. And discovered that my current hometown is not for freelensing, because it's hard if you don't have level differences (Pécs has mountains and hills.)

 

Although it's hard to catch any appreciable pictures when freelensing, it's worth trying. Here is what I have captured in the past years.

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