“The object of a question is to obtain information that matters to us, and no one else.”
- Sean Connery as William Forrester in "Finding Forrester"

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Friday, February 16, 2007

Right-Angle Lenses

After teaching the Photoshop Elements class today - I actually figured out how to edit the layer styles in Elements, by the way - I sat down with my dad and we were talking about some footage we received for the project we were shooting down in NYC a couple of weeks ago. We began talking about the occasional need for stealth when shooting in public spaces. He related an instance from about 15 years ago when he saw someone shooting with an early version of a right-angle lens. Basically the attachment consists of an angled mirror at the end of your lens so you can appear to be shooting straight ahead when you are really looking either left, right, up, or down. With the particular model shown here, you can screw the right-angle attachment onto the end of your lens like a filter and then rotate it around to capture your desired subject. There is even some glass at the end so the average person that may see you shooting will think you're shooting as normal. With the prevalence of Photoshop in the workflows of most photographers, the fact that your image would be reversed is barely an issue to deal with.