I've only used this lens for a couple of weeks now, but I'm greatly impressed with its versatility and quality of built and design. Sharpness is better than any other lens I own or have owned (I used to shoot with various Nikon film cameras before going ditigal with the 10D) This may well become my...

Sharpness; versatility

Weight; price

The Canon TS-E 45mm f/2.8 Tilt-Shift Lens brings tilt, shift and rotate movements to a digital (or film) SLR format camera body. In near-standard focal length, the TS-E 45 delivers excellent optical quality . First, what is a Tilt-Shift lens?

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.

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.

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.

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).

The lens offers more than the shift and tilt functions - it gives the photographs a certain surreal look to the colours as well. It is not as a sharp as say a 50/1.8, but the creativity features more than make up for it.

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.

"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.

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.

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