What is an off-axis lens?

"Off-axis" in photography means that if you don't pay attention to the moving direction of the object or shake the lens left and right, the resulting lens will cause confusion in the moving direction, line of sight direction or positional relationship of the characters on the screen.

"Off-axis" is a taboo in shooting. In reality, once the "off-axis" lens is accidentally produced in the shooting, the later editor should try to make up for it. However, some people deliberately use off-axis lenses in shooting to produce some special effects. Reasonable "off-axis" is to establish a new axis, obtain rich and diverse picture styles, and realize the processing and expression of the reconstructed space of the picture.

Extended data:

There is a rule in the spatial processing of film and television: when shooting from different angles, the lens can not cross the axis at will, but can only shoot at one side of the axis 180 degrees. When shooting TV programs, the cameraman must establish axis consciousness and follow the axis law when dealing with lens scheduling, which is the basic condition for forming a sense of unity in picture space and consistency in visual orientation.

In the creation of TV programs, if the cameraman has established the axis consciousness and mastered the rules and essentials of using the axis, he can use the axis to shoot the required lens pictures flexibly and freely in actual shooting, thus avoiding the phenomenon of "jumping axis" when combining various lenses of the object to be expressed in the later stage, realizing the complete unity of the lens pictures in position, direction and space, and creating excellent TV programs in various picture forms that meet the audience's perceptual requirements.

References:

People's Network-On-axis and Off-axis Principles in TV Shooting

Baidu encyclopedia-horizontal axis