Experiments: Freelensing

Written by Nasir Hamid on October 29th, 2012

These shots are my first attempts at experimenting with freelensing which is when you hold a lens in front of a camera without it being physically attached to the camera. The beauty of this is being able to freely move the lens around and create tilt/shift effects that you’d never be able to achieve if the lens was attached to the camera body. The images here were created 100% in camera on film, I haven’t applied any fake filters. Have you ever wondered where ideas for the looks you get in apps such as Instagram come from? These were the last three frames on the roll I happened to have in my camera at the time. Now that I’ve seen how good these shots have turned out I’m keen to try this technique on some portraits. Any volunteers?

[Tech info:] Rolleiflex SL66 with an old Carl Zeiss lens that I transplanted from a 6×9 folding camera, Fuji Pro 400H film home processed by me.

Radcliffle Camera railings

Radcliffe Camera entrance

Side of Bodleian Library

 

 

5 Comments so far ↓

  1. Ryan says:

    Do you not get any light leaking in to the film?

    • Nasir Hamid says:

      Not really that I can tell. I mounted the lens in a 5×4 lens board (140mm x 140mm) so that helped to block a lot of light out. I was also in the shade.

  2. Marcel says:

    Stunning! Never heard of the term freelensing, but the images are gorgeous!

  3. Gerard says:

    It looks like I’ll be back Oxford way later this month, and I’d be happy to be a free-lensing portrait subject 🙂

Reply to Ryan