Blog Keywords

Popular Posts for the Month

Thursday, December 17, 2009

E-P2 and the Diorama Art Filter

Based on Wikipedia, the term "diorama" denotes a partially three-dimensional, full-size replica or scale model of a landscape typically showing historical events, nature scenes or cityscapes, for purposes of education or entertainment.

42mm, f/8.0, 1/200s, ISO100

As far as my short excursion with the E-P2, diorama to me was more towards entertainment. I found it amusing at least. The idea to shoot cute looking scenery which was actually real-life was just fun!

With the E-P2, there are 2 additional Art Filters which total to 8. The other new filter is the Cross Processing effect.

Interesting observation was that the filter used a masking layer with Gaussian blur at the peripheral section, with the sharp center gradually getting blur in an oval shape along the horizon. The top and bottom third parts of the frame were blurred to convey a shallow depth-of-field that created an illusion of a miniature model or scene. As observed, the row of houses are at the center of the frame and are sharp in focus. The foreground represented by the highway with vehicles speeding along were blurred, so was the background with sweeping scene of Klang Valley and the Titiwangsa mountain range.

Somehow, shooting vertically won't really work that well. I think due to the orientation of the processing that only traverse along the horizontal plane would not blend well with vertical shots.


40mm, f/9, 1/200s, ISO100

As can be observed, the effect did not look convincing as the road's white broken lines did not adhere to the depth-of-field effect and were in focus at the bottom 3rd of the frame. I thought the processor was intelligent enough to detect a flag in the orientation sensor, and did the proper processing for a vertical composition. I was wrong!

Ah well, I won't delve seriously into this little niggle, as I had said earlier in this post; this Diorama effect was supposed to be FUN!!!!


And it definitely was a joy to use!




2 comments:

Jason Sparks said...

This is an interesting filter to add. This acts like a software version of a tilt shift lens right? and for hundreds less...

Razi said...

only the part of diorama effect, tilt-shift still have the perspective correction effect.
yeah, this filter is so cool.