Lemon Drop Kid wrote:
I once was chastised for a slanting horizon when the ground level was rising, left to right.
A bulldozer would have cleaned up that slight problem for you.
Dennis
In addition to most brands having an electronic level on the LCD screen, most modern Pentax cameras have a live segmented level in the viewfinder which makes it easy to get a straight horizon even when one cannot see the horizon. There is also an automatic horizon correction feature which will simply rotate the sensor to make that correction without any user input. I leave this on when handheld shooting and it takes any thought out of crooked frames. Obviously, if you are intentionally tilting for effect, that is beyond the camera's adjustment range, so it knows not to apply any correction. pretty cool.
Tilted shots are quite popular with the younger folks today. My daughter posts frequently on Instagram and Snapchat where photos that have been slanted seem to be the rage. LOL!
Chris
Gosh, must *everything* be electronic?
They make little bubble levels that attach to the accessory shoe. Works on any camera.
Dosn't need batteries--depends only on gravity. Also, some tripod heads have built in
bubble levels.
We avoid tilts at all costs....Distracting
BlueMorel wrote:
I indulge in a couple of online photo contests - Gurushots and Viewbug, so I see lots of photos of various quality. One thing that distracts from some otherwise great photos is when there's a tilt to either the horizon or roof line, or vertical edges. (I'm sometimes guilty, myself.) Intentional tilts, or inherent tilts - e.g., Leaning Tower of Pisa - for artistic purposes are one thing. It's the careless tilt I notice.
With most editing tools, adjusting is trivial and no reason to worry either on tripod or out of hand.
CPR
Loc: Nature Coast of Florida
I have those little bubble levels and if doing panoramas I may use it. But most of the time, just don't bother. It's too easy to fix in post. With "Content Aware" turned on there is no loss around the edges.
One relatively unobtrusive aid to keeping thing level and vertical is to use a grid in the finder. Several Canon models of DSLRs have interchangeable gridded focussing screens available and they're not terribly expensive.
The easiest thing to level is water except if of a lake that has a curved shore line at the far distance. Several people at my photo class criticized one picture because the far shore against mountains was not straight. You could tell that it was level from the waves and ripples in the water.
viewbug is a scam do not sign up
lukevaliant wrote:
viewbug is a scam do not sign up
What makes it a scam? Been on and off for a few years. Sure, they try to get you to upgrade but they do not force you. If you stay on the free side the contests you can enter simply have cheaper prizes. I don't call that a scam! It's like spotify, you get adds with the free subscription but none when you upgrade.
I take a lot of photos which are primarily hand held. Whether indoors or out a tripod is not normally used. I try to keep all of my shots level but periodically there is a little tilt. PP will usually take care of the problem and if there is a tilt it might be 1 - 2 degrees. Sometimes in action shots the photo maybe up to 5 degrees, but here again PP sure does help in leveling.
Alas, in some shots, there are two different things:
*what is level
*what looks level
Ever been to one of those "mystery spots" (i.e., tourist traps) where water appears to run uphill? :-)
The bottom line is that you really have to look though the viewfinder:
if it doesn't look tilted, it's not tilted.
The trick is, you have to go *only* by what you see in the viewfinder. That's one of the hardest
things. I am very bad at it, which is why I use the little cube level. It works about 90% of the time.
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