Creating “Selective Focus” & “Miniature” effect | TITL Adapter Review

Creating "Selective Focus" & "Miniature" effect | TITL Adapter Review

Over the last few years I’ve been testing and reviewing all sorts of vintage lenses, rarely touching on a subject of adapters. Eventually I will do an in-depth post about all the adapters I use for vintage lenses, but this time I want to take a closer look at a very unusual adapter, which in a way works like any other lens adapter, but with addition of a TILT functionality, usually found in Tilt/Shift lenses as well as special effect lenses like LENS BABY.

TILT functionality has two main purposes: selective focus and ability to make things appear miniature, both of which are very strong effects with a potential to bring some very creative visuals to the project at hand.

Unlike the tilt/shift lenses, this adapter is very cheap and unlike Lens Baby lenses it doesn’t lock you into a specific optic. With an adapter you can simply use any lens with a compatible mount. In my case, it’s an M42 to E-mount adapter, which allows me to use any M42 mount lens on any E-mount camera. There are plenty of other versions for MFT (M4/3) and E-mount cameras, which include Canon EF, Nikon F, Olympus OM, Minolta MD, Contax C/Y, Pentax K and a few other mounts.

If you search of one of these adapters on ebay, you’ll notice that some of these adapters also have the SHIFT functionality, turning any lens into a proper tilt/shift lens, but these adapters are expensive, slightly defeating the purpose of this post, as it’s all about adding an additional creative element to affordable vintage lenses. If you are going to be spending $$$ on such adapter, you might as well start looking at proper tilt/shift lenses.

So this time let’s concentrate on the cheap TILT adapters and the difference they can bring to your projects.

There are a few types of TILT adapters, but my one has a ring with a scale from 1 to 8 indicating the (approx) degree of tilt. This allows to you vary the strength of the TILT effect. The adapter can also be rotated 360° (with click stops) to the desired position.

Below is a visual example of how TILT adapter works by Zexun Tan.

You can find a more scientific explanation on how TILT effect works here, but in short, when adapter is pointed up or down you get a horizontal line of focus, great for adding a shallow depth of field to wide angle shots and potentially making a distant scenes appear miniature (subject to position and composition).

When adapter is pointed to the left or right, you get a vertical line of focus, which works great for addition of selective focus/ DOF effect to otherwise flat looking scenes.

It’s also possible to position adapter at other angles creating various angled lines of focus, that can keep both foreground and background subjects in focus. When used carefully it can create yet another very strong effect that can’t be achieve any other way. The closest thing to this effect is a split diopter method, which is also an interesting effect, but doesn’t have as much control.

Below are some examples of the of the lines of created by using TILT adapter.

The possibilities are really endless and it’s a lot of fun finding out how different lenses, f-stops, camera positions, compositions & subjects affect the results.

Although the effect is most obvious with wide angle lenses (which otherwise have a very deep field of view), it’s also possible to utilize it with telephoto lenses for close ups and even macro shots, especially when performing focus pulls, which look particularly unusual with focus going from side to side, or up and down, rather than strictly from foreground to background.

I’ve used this adapter for the little web promo below and although it’s not very obvious, about 50% of shots have the selective focus effect achieved using of this adapter.

Conclusion: I highly recommend getting one! They add so much creativity for very little money. The $30 one I bought is pretty solid and woks fine as a regular M42 to E-mount adapter too. Personally I wouldn’t but one of the $150-200 ones unless as wanted both tilt and shift functionalities, but for $30-50, this TILT adapter definitely worth it.

Tilt-adapter
Click to find TILT adapter on Ebay

I do my best to make this website a great resource for people interested in vintage lenses for video use, so I hope you’ve enjoyed this & other posts. I hope they will help you save some money on your future lens investments too. I’ve joined the ebay affiliate program to help me run this website, fund my tests & lens giveaways, so if you found this content useful and would like to help me produce more similar content, please use the ebay links in this post if you’re planning to buy one of these lenses or bookmark or use this link if you want to buy anything else on eBay.com or this link if you shop on eBay.co.uk. You will not be spending a penny more using these links, while still helping as eBay will pay out a small percentage from any purchase or successful bid, which in turn will support new content on www.vintagelensesforvideo.com. Thank you.

8 Responses to Creating “Selective Focus” & “Miniature” effect | TITL Adapter Review

  1. I bought the same adapter that you have, but with EF mount. I wanted to use it with my GH4 + Metabones XL which is always hanging infront of my GH4.

    But the adapter doesn’t focus on any lens much further than 1m max. It’s worth as macro adapter only. What I am doing wrong?

    I have tried it with ny EF converted Canon FD lenses + some russian lenses and every time same results. Just usable as a macro usage.

    Then I thought it’s because of the Metabones adapter is sitting between. So I tried this with Canon 5D II + different modern EF lenses (16-35, 24-70, 70-200) but the macro effect got EVEN worse. Lenses were sharp just like 1mm from the front of it. On some lenses ut was focusing in UV filter infront of the lens!

    Quite dissapointed with my adapter and confused. Can’t really use it anywhere. Any advice, what I am doing wrong?

    • The problem with idea of such adapter on EF is that EF doesn’t allow enough space for adapter to be angled, therefor most of the image is being pushed out creating macro effect. I would recommend avoiding such adapters that are sold for EF or Nikon cameras. The only ones that actually work are the ones for mirrorless as thickness of the adapter allows it to be angled while staying at the right distance from the sensor. Hope that makes sense

  2. #VintageLensesForVideo Hello. Would Sigma 18-35 f1.8 (Nikon F) fully work with let’s say ‘FOTGA Tilt Adapter Ring for Nikon AI F lens To Micro Four Thirds’ ? In all focal length?

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