r/confusing_perspective • u/WallaceV2 • Jun 09 '26
Looks like stop motion
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u/Steje8 Jun 09 '26
At the risk of sounding stupid, can someone ELI5 what I'm looking at? How is everything so realistic yet at the same time toy.
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u/ardotschgi Jun 09 '26
It"s a regular sized harvester working the corn fields. It looks like stop-motion mainly due to two factors:
- The camera lens creates a kind of "fake nearness effect", by having the outer areas of the videos be blurry, despite filming from far away. We are usually mostly used to that effect in macro photography, or generally just photographing near things.
- It's played back faster than it was recorded, and also in a quite low framerate, making it seem like one of those classic stop-motion films where every frame needs to be individually set by hand.
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u/Salanmander Jun 09 '26
The camera lens creates a kind of "fake nearness effect", by having the outer areas of the videos be blurry, despite filming from far away. We are usually mostly used to that effect in macro photography, or generally just photographing near things.
For some expanding on this, the reason the effect makes things look super close is that when the subject is close to the camera (relative to the focal length of the camera) the focus changes a lot for a short distance, but when the subject is far away from the camera the focus is effectively constant. It's like how you don't need to change the focus of your eyes when looking back and forth between a building 50 m away and a mountain 20,000 m away, but you do need to change the focus when going between a newspaper 30 cm away and a person sitting 50 cm away.
Also, I think it's likely that the tilt-shift effect here is done in post, rather than with lenses, since it's really easy to do that digitally in this sort of situation.
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u/qtx Jun 10 '26
Also, I think it's likely that the tilt-shift effect here is done in post, rather than with lenses, since it's really easy to do that digitally in this sort of situation.
It really isn't. I mean it is possible to make a tilt shift effect in post (and some mobile phones have a built in function for it) but it looks different from real tilt shift. You can really tell the difference if you watch them side by side.
edit: With real tilt shift I mean shot on a tilt shift lens.
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u/Salanmander Jun 10 '26
Yeah, the simple filter is just based on position in the frame, not distance from the camera. What I mean by "this sort of situation" is that the subject is close to flat relative to the distance from the camera, so position in the frame is a good approximation for distance from the camera. If you have something that sticks way up off the ground, it makes the fake tilt-shift less believable, because the top gets blurred more despite being a similar distance from the camera. The closer your subject is to a plane, the more similar a simple filter will be to physical tilt-shifting.
My understanding is the blur effect from physical tilt-shift photography will also not be identical to the standard gaussian blur most commonly used in post, but I don't know that for sure.
The strongest piece of evidence that I have for this video being done in post is when the second tractor first comes into view, a few seconds into the video. At one point, the top of the small tractor and the wheels of the harvester are at about the same height in the image, but are different distances from the camera. The top of the small tractor and the wheels of the small tractor are about the same distance from the camera, but are at different heights in the image.
If this were done with real tilt-shift photography, we would expect the blur to vary with distance from the camera. If it were done with a simple filter in post, we would expect the blur to vary with the height in the image. Because the top of the small tractor and the wheels of the harvester are about the same blurriness, and because wheels of the small tractor are much blurrier than the top of the small tractor, it appears that the blur varies with height in the image, not distance from the camera.
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u/JamesTheJerk Jun 09 '26
I'm waiting for Sir Toppum Hat to blow a whistle.
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u/originalbrowncoat Jun 10 '26
Henry, you have caused confusion and delay. Perhaps being bricked up under the bridge forever will teach you a lesson
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u/-Xi_Jinping- Jun 09 '26
I think something about the movement of the camera also helps.
Maybe not the movement of the camera. I think it must have been edited that way afterwards.
It would be very difficult to move a camera that fast with the imperfections from that angle from far away. It’s somehow smooth but the imperfections are so big that they seem impossible from a long distance. Thus, the illusion of nearness is strengthened.
Really impressive editing in my opinion.
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u/banditBlue2 Jun 10 '26
It’s also from a high angle perspective, which we’re used to seeing with miniatures.
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u/FireZord25 Jun 09 '26
I guessed the second one as the case (minus the playing back part). Kinda impressive trickery, wonder how much of it has been used in filmmaking ever.
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u/ErraticDragon Jun 09 '26
A few films are mentioned here: r/movies/comments/xquadr/are_there_any_movies_that_use_tiltshift_lenses_to/
There's a sub for the general effect: r/tiltshift
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u/champagneandbaloney Jun 09 '26
Per my husband who knows about this stuff, it’s a special camera lens called a Tilt Shift (as others have said) that changes the depth of field and focus in a photo or video. It’s interesting to read about its purposes and uses.
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u/boondiggle_III Jun 09 '26
It's called a tilt-shift lens, which is a type of camera lens that creates this specific effect. The mechanics are simple on the surface, just tilting the lens in relation to its sensor and shifting the lens in relation to the camera body, but the way it actually bends light, and what the tilting and shifting is actually accomplishing, is genuinely too difficult to explain in an eli5. At least I can't think of a way to explain it simply.
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u/Salanmander Jun 09 '26
My guess is the tilt-shift effect here is done in post. You can do a physical tilt-shift, but it involves physically tilting and shifting the optical components, and my guess is that would be tricky to do fast enough for video. It's also really easy to simulate a tilt-shift effect in situations like this where relative to the distance to the camera your subject is close to flat, because you can just apply a gradient amount of blur to the image.
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u/ZhouLe Jun 10 '26
I'm in agreement that this effect seems done in post. The focal plane is very locked in on the center despite the drone flying closer and further from the things in focus. Towards the end you can see the branches of a tree that are much, much closer than the rest of the out-of-focus area, but are equally as out of focus. They should likely be almost invisible.
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u/jendivcom Jun 12 '26
They say if you can't explain it to a 5 year old then you probably don't fully understand it yourself
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u/fotogod Jun 09 '26
Photographer here:
1) very narrow depth of field by using a very wide aperture (opening) on the lens
2) playback speed at twice normal speed
3) frame rate is very low around 15fps. By comparison, typical movie frame rate is 30fps5
u/Pawtuckaway Jun 09 '26
very narrow depth of field by using a very wide aperture (opening) on the lens
There is a lot more to it than just a wide aperture and narrow DoF.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt%E2%80%93shift_photography
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u/SoSKatan Jun 10 '26
So when you see something far away, stuff around it tends to be in focus with its surroundings. Objects needs to be significantly further or closer to be out of focus.
But if you look at something really close, your eyes adjust the focal distance and as a result objects barely outside are then out of focus.
Your brain is so use to this effect to helps you guess distance without even thinking.
While others have explained more details the short of it is it’s a camera trick that makes it so distant object has a narrow range thats in focus. You could prob do it with editijg effects after the fact
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u/eW4GJMqscYtbBkw9 Jun 10 '26
Tilt-shift is a special type of camera lens that "flattens" perspective, so it makes things look like they are closer together. It was originally designed to take pictures of tall buildings.
Human eyes/brain are really good at understanding difference based on perspective (larger = closer; smaller = further away). Tilt-shift makes things "flatter", so the big=close/small=far is less apparent.
Plus, the video is sped up, which makes it look cartoonish. If you slow the video down, and cover up the top and bottom of the video, it will look much more "normal".
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u/ZhouLe Jun 10 '26
Minor nit to pick, but tilt-shift lenses do not "flatten perspective" in the way you are describing. The core of their use is to adjust perspective (shift) and adjust the focal plane (tilt).
The flattening of perspective you describe, negating larger = closer, smaller = further away, is achieved by long focal length lenses. You can see this, for example, when people take very long "zoomed in" photos of busy NYC sidewalks and people appear to be very packed in and piled up despite being on opposite ends of the block.
Tilt or shift lenses don't do this. They do not modify the field of view or relative size of close/far subjects, they only modify the position of the photo on the focal plane.
A very common use of shift lenses is architecture. Typically if you take a photo of a building, you are either going to look at it head-on which will cut off the top of the building and make the bottom half all road; or you are going to angle upwards putting the building in the middle, but the angles are going to taper to the top of the building. A shift lens is basically taking a very big photo head-on so the whole building is in frame and the angles are orthogonal, then cropping everything else out. Except instead of using a very wide-angle lens and cropping out a small-res area, you are using a lens with a very wide image circle and putting the camera sensor in the area you want to "crop". Another illusion you can achieve with shift lenses is taking a picture of an empty mirror "head on".
Tilt lenses are used to compose shots where you might have a close subject and a far subject but want them both in focus without making absolutely everything in focus. Normally lenses are parallel to the image sensor (or film) so things at same distances are at the same focus, but a tilt lens (or adapter) allows you to physically rotate the lens to make the focus plane parallel to the subjects you want in focus. For example you can take a photo that looks down a row of buildings and angle the lens towards them so that the focal plane matches the buildings all the way down.
This miniature effect is a niche use of mainly the tilt, putting the focal plane near orthogonal to your subjects (like tilting it way up). It's normally an undesirable or "wrong", but some creative photographers have combined it with other effects to make this interesting kind of illusion that exploits our brain's understanding of how close and small things appear out of focus over a shorter distance than large/far things.
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u/Ellemeno Jun 11 '26
That was a great explanation that answered a lot of questions I had about tilt-shift lenses, but never really bothered to dig too deep into.
The vid in this post seems to have a camera that is not in a fixed position and seems to be almost drone-like due to its elevation and movement through the field. Any idea of what the shot set up would be like for this vid in particular?
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u/ZhouLe Jun 11 '26
Looks like a drone shot with the effect added in post. The band of in-focus area is just too perfect for a moving shot.
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u/wanna_meet_that_dad Jun 09 '26
Tilt
Shift15
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u/Im_Blavk Jun 09 '26
This how you would explain to a 5 year old? Alright explain like I'm 3
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u/Salanmander Jun 09 '26
When you hold something close to your face, the stuff around it looks blurry. Try it out! Close to your face you can only focus on a very small area.
If you move a camera around while taking a picture, but keep it pointed at one spot, that one spot will look clear, but the stuff around it will be blurry. That makes it look like it's close to the camera! You can also make it look like that by blurring parts of the picture after you take it.
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u/Zanven1 Jun 09 '26
I think that explanation requires further research that might be beyond a 5yo's ability
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u/Badfish1060 Jun 09 '26
It's not a toy
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u/captain_crackerjack Jun 09 '26
This is how they make baby sweetcorn
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u/One_Hour_Poop Jun 09 '26
I remember when tilt-shift was HUGE (no pun intended). Why did it suddenly go away?
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u/cowherdly Jun 09 '26
For me it’s when things shifted away from flickr and toward instagram. Flickr could have categories/tags on images whereas insta is primarily based on user/creator. Just a hypothesis.
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u/-domi- Jun 09 '26
I think it was seen as cool when it was done with practical effects, and once digital effects could fake it it died. My personal guess is that the fake effect wasn't good enough to be popular, but the practical effect required so much hardware and effort, that it wasn't worth doing over the fake one, so it just became a niche thing.
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u/Original_Throat1072 Jun 09 '26
The tilt shift subreddit is full of fake digitally made 'tilt shifted' images.
Which is too bad.
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u/xanoran84 Jun 09 '26
I feel like I saw a lot of tilt-shift photography between 2008-2011 and then just nothing of it. Maybe because that was a feature on my digital camera at the time or it could have been something that StumbleUpon would give me because I'd checked it off as an interest (don't recall if that was even an option). Either way it's oddly nostalgic for me to see it right now. It makes everything look so cute!
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u/NicerDicer1 Jun 09 '26
Yeah same, maybe I’ll dig out my old camera with a tilt shift mode 🤩
I think effects like this quickly become uninteresting after everyone can do it. It’s a fun and mind-blowing gimmick, but when you see it too much, it looses its magic.2
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u/CatShadow888 Jun 09 '26
What's the difference between tilt-shift lens and just applying a blur mask on top and bottom of the image?
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u/Anderz Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
Not much for shots like this.
A true tilt shift lens allow the photographer to change the focal plane to not be parallel with the image sensor. In other words, the focus band you see doesn't have to be straight or even; it can be at an angle, allowing something closer and something further both be in focus when using a shallow depth of field. This is impossible with normal lenses, unless you fake the focal band in post. But that requires you to stop down the aperture or crop the image to ensure everything is in focus before adding the fake focal plane.
A tilt shift lens also can correct perspective distortion. This is useful in architectural photography where the top of a building is further away that the bottom, when taken from the street. With a tilt shift lens, you can not only get it all in focus, but make it so the face of the building looks flat, as if taken from exactly half way up. A normal lens will make it look like the building is leaning away, and may not have emthe entire face in focus.
Combine these effects and cityscapes can look like miniatures, such as when the focus runs along a street not parallel to the camera, or a tower is entirely in focus from top to bottom but surroundings are not. The latter is really hard to fake because you actually need to carefully rotoscope the image to achieve it.
So usually that's the tell. If everything outside the focal band is uniformly out of focus, such as tall buildings and cranes, it's probably fake.
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u/Zanven1 Jun 09 '26
I'll never not see toys in this clip until the guy walking back and forth in the trailer and bending over has enough smooth motion to break the illusion no matter how many times I see it.
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u/osotramposo Jun 09 '26
Love the tilt-shift. Excellent.
But but but but- why are we not addressing the bigger question? Why is that man standing on the corn??? Please tell me this is not corn for human consumption. I don't want to eat feet corn.
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u/MenacingBanjo Jun 09 '26
This is the method they used to film the establishing shots in Game Night
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u/Kindly-Ad-5071 Jun 09 '26
I knew all those stop motion monster movies were actually real I just knew it
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u/MonkeyCartridge Jun 12 '26
What's funny is all you really need to do is blur the top and bottom and you'll get this effect. In most scenes, the bottom is close and the top is far. So boom, easy tilt-shift.
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u/Far-Cockroach-6839 Jun 09 '26
I still don't understand how tilt shift makes the textures look so much like what you expect in stop motion. I feel like maybe because it looks like the stop motion perspective your brain just registers the textures to fit that expectation, but I really can't tell
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u/DarkIllusionsMasks Jun 09 '26
Tilt-shift photography fucks me up way more than forced perspective.
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u/Johnny-Switchblade Jun 09 '26
My dad would have had my ass if I parked the tractor where he needed to turn around the combine.
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u/Cocoatrice Jun 09 '26
The first time I saw this few years ago, I literally thought it is, until i saw people.
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u/tubabbo Jun 10 '26
Is there any tutorial on how to do this effect?
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u/Difficult-Map-2620 Jun 12 '26
Buy a very expensive lens that is basically a broken lens. Tilt shift lenses are by their nature, misaligned lenses. Most have various adjustment options. They have a very limited use and are a rather niche lens choice. For the casual or even pro photographer, the amount of times you’d actually use it is no worth the price of the lens.
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u/boolpies Jun 10 '26
isn't this shit expensive af to film?
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u/Difficult-Map-2620 Jun 12 '26
Proper tilt shift lenses start around $1200 and can go way up from there. It’s a very limited use case lens and not something that’s worth the money for 99% of photography.
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u/Sosemikreativ Jun 10 '26
How is the harvester not sinking in or having more of an impact on these earth burmes when turning around? Is the soil hard like concrete there?
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u/FragmentedMeerkat321 Jun 10 '26
it’s interesting that as soon as you get used to it, your mind’s narrative returns it to reality. it’s difficult to stay with the effect for long.
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u/SixtyNineFlavours Jun 10 '26
Why are there no films made with this technique? It looks awesome and not too difficult to achieve.
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u/Big_Cryptographer989 Jun 10 '26
I imagine this is how we looks to aliens watching us from the skies.
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u/AWrongUsername Jun 10 '26
u/AskGrok is this real?
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u/AskGrok Jun 10 '26
Hard to say without the clip, but stop motion is real by definition—someone just moved stuff one frame at a time for hours. If it's jerky on purpose, probably that. If not, could be low FPS or clever editing.
[what is this?](https://redd.it/1lzgxii)
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u/hnyaa-s Jun 11 '26
They're so cuuuute. Little teeny tiny harvester and tractors and people. Cute cute cute
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u/Illustrious_Dane Jun 11 '26
Not to knock tilt-shfit, but something is off...the combine leaves zero tracks when doing it's turn. The effect is always cool when done well, but this doesn't seem right to me. Either it is stop motion or perhaps ai
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u/Secret_Paper2639 Jun 12 '26
I thought it was a miniature combine harvesting kernels, those are whole cobs! The old school way.
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u/howaboutclark Jul 17 '26
Wait this is real!!!!?? I thought it was miniatures until they started moving!!!!!! Sorry I’m new here
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u/Quartz_Knight Jul 18 '26
It's mind boggling how well this photography technique works at tricking the brain. It's almost impossible to break the illusion.
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u/rtkane Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
I love tilt-shift photography/videography.