Faking miniatures the Canon way
It seems like creative shooting modes are popular on this year’s compact cameras. For example, though Canon has long given its cameras controls for playing with colors, this year it’s just gone and added a handful of simple point-and-shoot options for getting more unusual results. One of them, Miniature Effect, applies a selective focus to scenes making full-size, real-life subjects look like miniature models.
The effect is similar to tilt-shift photography. Canon doesn’t call it that, though, probably because those words don’t mean much to most snapshot photographers and because it’s all being done digitally.
Using the mode is easy; it’s really just a matter of deciding where you want to focus and then taking the picture. You can then move the box up and down in the frame to select what’s focused on. What’s in the box is in sharp focus, everything above and below gets blurred. Contrast and saturation are also heightened. The results are also better if your scenes already have a lot of contrast and color, you’re shooting from an elevated location, and your photo is of an entire scene, not a single subject.
You can get the same effect with some basic Photoshop but this mode brings it to the masses and makes the photos ready to share straight from the camera. The mode is available on the SD1400 IS, SX210 IS, and SD3500 IS.