Should this be the next cool smartphone camera mode: tilt-shift for photos and videos

A non-pretentious mirrorless camera, the Olympus Pen (E-PL3 in my case) is not likely to go in the history books. In fact, some reviewers called it 'an almost great camera', which is not exactly flattering. But it did have one extremely cool feature: tilt-shift mode. And once I discovered it, I was hooked. The tilt-shift effect miniaturizes the world to make it look toyishly fantastical, and the effect is usually aided by boosted saturation and vivid colors. My photos with the effect turned all my friends and familiar landscapes into some fun and memorable avatars of themselves. And looking back through these photos, I wished I could capture such images with ease on a modern smartphone as well.

Tilt-shift makes images toyishly fantastical. Why don't we have it on phones?

So here's an idea for you, Apples and Samsungs of the world: give us tilt-shift mode in your phone cameras! Modern day phones certainly do have the processing power and there are many third-party apps that offer this function (check out the links below), but fact is that unless a camera mode is built inside the stock camera app, it gets very rarely used. Time lapse, slow motion videos and most recently, live photos, are all illustrations towards that: it is important for camera features to be built inside the stock camera app in order for people to use them.

Right below, you'd find a few images from my good old Olympus Pen and a video showing the tilt-shift effect. Do you like this effect? And would you like to see it in the stock camera app of your phone? Let us know in the comments!