This video from Canon does a great job of showcasing the “tilt” effects possible when you have a tilt-shift lens attached to your camera.
By tilting the front element up or down or side to side, you can move the plane of focus.
With a normal lens, the plane of focus is fixed but tilt-shift lens have all kinds of movements available in which to move this plan of focus at will.
Shift functions allow the image to move up and down or side to side without moving the camera so you can take photographs with the camera completely level, while moving the image around via the lens.
As the video shows, these lenes are not just for still photographers, videographers can explore all kinds of exciting camera movements by simple moving the lens element.
No video slide is needed to move the “camera” on a horizontal plane. Simply turn the shift knob.
Likewise change the in focus subject by moving the tilt knob while shooting. Note that all tilt-shift lenses are manual focus only. There simply is no way to add autofocus motors among all of those moving parts.
Canon has in recent year’s invested heavily into the production of ungraded existing Tilt-Shit lenses such as the 24mm and 45mm as well as brought three new T/S Macro lenses to the market for the first time.
Macro capability is exciting for photographers of small objects as it allows the focal plane to be place along the subject, increasing the amount of the subject that is in focus.
Creative portrait photographers looking for that slice of focus effect in which everything is blurry except the subject will enjoy these new focal lengths in the Canon tilt-shift line up. As well as those who like creating the popular “miniature” effect.