iPhone Photography Effect Workflow – Freelensing – By Paul Brown

©Paul Brown

{ analog freelensing – example 1 } ©Paul Brown

{ analog freelensing – example 2 } ©Paul Brown

{ freelensing } ©Paul Brown

Freelensing is shooting a photograph with the lens detached from the camera body. You focus by setting the lens to infinity and tilting and moving the lens in one hand whilst controlling the camera and pressing the shutter in the other. The effect of this is to change the flat focal plane to a tilted one. As a result areas that would traditionally be in focus move out of focus and generate some interesting effects. It is I guess a free version of tilt-shift or lensbaby photography but with less control.

I did come across adapters to actually attach SLR lenses to an iPhone. I guess therefore it is theoretically possible to do this with an iPhone and some lenses. The adapters though cost hundreds of dollars / pounds and that really isn’t a viable option for me. Therefore, with no option to detach the iPhone lens, I was left with post processing options. Initially I thought about simple tilt-shift apps / processing but these tend to result in blur rather than a reasonably convincing out of focus ‘bokeh’. The following is how I went about trying to copy the effect of my reference images.

Links To Key iPhone photography apps / processes: AfterFocus • analog • Filterstorm • focal plane • freelensing • Hipstamatic • Mextures • Photo FX • Snapseed • Superimpose • tilt

©Paul Brown

Hipstamatic ~ initial capture. Normally where I anticipate significant processing I start with a pure image out of ProCamera. However, this Hipstamtic image struck me as suitable for the experiment so I went with it.

©Paul Brown

Filterstorm ~ as always crop and resize at the earliest opportunity. This crop is just to lose the border and resize to 2,000px x 2,000px to give a good resolution size for printing.

©Paul Brown

Snapseed ~ ‘Structure’ and ‘Sharpen’ both boosted by around 25pct.

©Paul Brown

AfterFocus ~ with no masking of focus areas, the entire image is moved out of focus by the maximum possible blur amount, with a round aperture and bokeh selected. The bokeh option gives the traditional dramatic out of focus highlights (circles in this case) for light specs and is why I chose AfterFocus rather than a traditional tilt-shift app / function to help create the effect.

©Paul Brown

Photo FX ~ ‘Wide angle lens’ selected and strength adjusted to suit the image. This action pulls the edges of the image outwards and therefore creates the distorted bokeh circles I was looking to replicate from my reference images.

©Paul Brown

Superimpose ~ Image one imported as background and image two imported as foreground. A Bi-Linear Gradient mask is applied centered over the subject’s right eye (as we view). The gradient mask is extended to blend out left and right gradually hiding the out of focus foreground image and introducing the focused background layer. Additionally, the gradient is set to be slightly off vertical, angled marginally from top left to bottom right. The images are blended under normal with maximum opacity.

©Paul Brown

At this point I have what I regard as my base image and can now proceed to process it as I see fit. The processes above have replicated the freelens effect quite well I think and now it’s time to have fun.

Mextures ~ I really enjoy creating my own Mextures formulas. However, for the purposes of this image the standard ‘Rothko’ formula is added. There is a subtle hint of light leak and freelensing may introduce light leaks to a lesser or greater extent. There are also hairs and dirt effects and whilst you would normally try to avoid these issues freelensing increases the risk of introducing dirt onto the film / sensor.

©Paul Brown

Snapseed ~ initially the standard ‘Drama’ filter is applied under standard settings. I then convert the image to black and white using the film pre-set but reduce grain levels to 25pct.