Tilting Up or Down

A232 Should I tilt Up or Down?

Tricks to predicting whether you need to tilt-up or tilt-down to plumb the vertical lines.

The following 5 tricks (Mnemonic techniques) were developed to make this easier for you to remember:

Above=Up. Below=Down.
Push the intrusion out.
Spot the big arrowhead.
\ / = Up. / \ = Down.
Spot a 'pulled out'-corner

Study the 5 mnemonic tricks below and pick one that seems logical and easy for you to remember.

1. Above=Tilt-Up. Below=Tilt-Down.

Just remember this:

Shots taken from above -> Tilt-up.
Shots taken from below -> Tilt-down.

Always be extra aware when shooting tall buildings and basement stores. That's when you are most likely to tilt your camera without being aware of it.

The tilted black bars to the left in this illustration symbolizes cameras.

2. Push the intrusion out

Look at the vertical lines as if something is intruding into your frame from the sides. Push the intrusion back out by pushing your camera forward where the intrusion is worst: at the top or the bottom.

This is easy to remember. This is the trick I use.

3. Spot the big arrowhead

Look at the vertical lines as part of a huge arrowhead as shown below. The arrow points you to where you should push forward on your camera:

/\ means to push forward at the top of your camera (equals tilt down)

\/ tells you to push forward at the bottom of your camera (equals tilt-up).

4. Lines leaning out \ / = Up. Leaning in / \ = Down.

When vertical lines are leaning outwards \ / you should tilt-up to neutralize the tilt.

When vertical lines are leaning inwards / \ you should tilt-down to neutralize the tilt.

5. Spot a 'pulled out'-corner

Sometimes you see one of the corners of the storefront or a window with a more acute (pointy) angle than the other 3 corners.

If an upper corner is pulled: Tilt-UP.

If a lower corner is pulled: Tilt-DOWN.

You can practice spotting the most 'pulled out' corner in this quiz.

Spot the most acute angle

After tilting to make the vertical lines plumb you may also need to move your camera. The translucent arrows in this illustration tell you which way you should move.

Basically, you always need to move in the opposite direction of the pulled corner. That is the same as getting closer to the sweet spot from where straight shots are taken.

If one of the sides (top, button, left, or right) looks longer then you need to move away from that side = closer to the sweet spot. This is illustrated with the white arrows in this illustration.

A summary of how to improve the perspectives by tilting and moving is given in the cheatsheet shown below.

Cheatsheet are available for download: Desktop or Mobile.

If you don't care to remember any of these mnemonic tricks above you can always just try tilting your camera up AND down to see what kind of tilt makes your vertical lines more plumb.

Click/tap your browser's Back button to continue. Or hit "Suggested next page" to continue til Zoom+Tilt+Crop-trick. Get a kick out of!

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