Tilt-Shift lenses alter the focal plane for selective focusing (rather like Lens Babies but without all their woes). They also allow you to correct for the 'falling away' effect of converging verticals (shoot a building from ground level and it looks like it's collapsing backwards).

For the unitiated: this is really a unique lens; you can just grab it and go, shooting normally, as manual focus-only, and it will render quite sharp, contrastive images.

I've owned a 45mm TS-E for 7 years and find it fun and an enjoyable experience to use. However, it needs improvement in several areas. It needs a circular aperture, rotatable tilting, and Canon's SSC lens coating. With these improvements the lens will be world-class.

Tilt-shift lenses appear to be quite in fashion at the moment, although the high cost of these specialist lenses normally make it so that many photographers cannot justify the cost, despite its benefits with control of the focal plane and of distortion.

"This is a great camera. Picture quality is outstanding and video quality is essentially the same as the bigger cousin, 7D. For the price, this must be one of the best camera's on the canon market.

Handling and Features Performance Verdict Specification Tilt-shift lenses appear to be quite in fashion at the moment, although the high cost of these specialist lenses normally make it so that many photographers cannot justify the cost, despite its benefits with control of the focal plane and of...

Priced reasonably; Excellent optical performance; Solid build; Good; solid controls over tilt-shift movements

Cannot rotate tilt and shift independently; Closest focus is only 40cm

The possibility's are enormous if you know how to use the lens, it is not so very easy to learn. I like the 45 mm on a FF very much, just in the middle of my two favourite's , the 35 mm and the 50/55 mm. It is easy to create miniature with this lens.

Offcourse all the nice things you can do with a tilt/shift lens; 45 mm is nice on a FF camera; Very good build

I do not like the bokeh; the only con I can think off

There are certain types of photography that only a very bulky monorail camera, or some field cameras, have excelled at in the past. Subjects like architecture where keystoning is a problem, or landscape and close-ups where obtaining enough depth-of-field to keep your subject in focus is critical.