Tilt-shift lenses are mostly used for architecture. Having the ability to shift the lens in relation to the sensor lets you change the perspective of a shot to straighten verticals that tend to lean backward when you tilt your camera up at a building. It'll expand my range of technique nicely.
The tilt functionality lets you change the plane of focus from being parallel to your sensor to something approaching perpendicular, creating zones of focus in a shot that people aren't normally accustomed to seeing, so the pictures can be really striking. The lensbaby accessories made this effect really popular and helped give birth to the whole toy photo craze where you can make an ordinary scene look like a miniature because of the novel depth of field effect. More recently it's been done to death in Photoshop or Instagram. It could have its uses for me in product photography where I'd want to get a whole table of objects in focus at a wide aperture, but for now, it's not something I've bothered playing with.
I've been more interested in using the shift ability to take 3 adjoining frames for large panoramic shots in the style of Joel Grimes. It gives a very different look to just panning the camera. To my eye it seems to deliver a very distinctive distortion effect which I rather like, so it's been assimilated into my style bag. So here are some scenes to enjoy from my favourite museum and photography haunt, Dunedin Gasworks Museum and various Urbex (urban exploration) locations.
I'm also planning to use it for backgrounds for some composite work (thank you again Mr Grimes). Here's an example.
Shame about the model, but you get the picture. Here's one of my latest favourites, from my LE G2 phone, another bit of Urbex photography. I shot it on a recce and wouldn't mind going back with my DSLR, but I'm not convinced I'll make a better picture with one.
For me, it just goes to reinforce the important lesson that you don't need fancy lenses to make pictures you like.
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