It’s true that mastering a tilt-shift takes a lot of practice. I’m not sure how much yet. But doing useful things with one (like using tilt-to-control depth of field) is simple, and it gives you those images where everything from the camera to infinity appears in focus.

This lens is commonly used for product photography because it keeps the entire area of interest in equally sharp focus without stopping down to f/16 and getting diffraction softness.

By the way, that last sentence was an entrance exam — if you didn’t understand it, you can’t rent this lens. Seriously, this is a big-boy toy, and I don’t want anyone else giving us a bad review because the PC-E lens they rented doesn’t autofocus very well (understandable because they are all manual focus).

Using the shift function to alter perspective for architectural photos is child’s play for those who once shot view cameras. The rest of us just play with the darn thing and chimp away until we get what you want. (For those who don’t know what chimping is, it’s when you look at the shot on the camera’s LCD and go “ooh, oooh, oooh!”).

Sometimes you’ll nail it right away. Sometimes you’ll get something with enough distorted reality to use as a “Don’t Do Drugs” poster. You can either throw those away or pretend that’s what you meant to do because you’re considering a career in fine art photography. I know. I shouldn’t use “fine art photography” and “career” in the same sentence—they have no common ground.