Let me give a short physical description of my 24-millimeter Canon TS/E shift lens. As many of my readers already know, a shift lens has optics mounted on a sled that can be mechanically shifted off center, parallel to the film plane.

Canon makes three such lenses, a 24 mm, a 45 mm and a 90 mm, which are of identical build. On each, there's a little wheel on the side of the lens, and when this is turned, the optics slide sideways, or shift.

The lens also rotates when you mount it, so the user can choose a direction for the shift. Finally, there's also a second nubbed wheel to tilt the lens—it's actually a shift/tilt—some nubs to lock down the shift and tilt, and scales to read off the extent of the movement. The whole thing is built like a rock out of heavy metal, no plastic in sight.

The classic use for a shift lens is for carefully framed captures of architecture. For example, vertical movement can bring tall objects like skyscrapers entirely into a shot, while keeping the camera level and the verticals straight. The shift lens avoids keystoning during the capture—buildings don't taper off as if you were looking up at them. Photoshop can correct perspective, but a shift lens does it better.

Through shifting, a wide-angle lens can reach out vertically or laterally to precisely frame the desired part of a subject, with no lost empty space to crop. As edges remain straight, the shift improves on the use of a super-wide lens like a fisheye. So, for cityscapes and urban landscapes, a shift lens can be exceedingly useful.

Indeed, most architecture shooters have traditionally employed view cameras, which are basically shift/tilt mechanisms with a lens mount on one end and a film holder attached on the other end, wrapped with bellows to make the whole assembly light-tight.

Edmund Ronald checks out Japan's advanced usage of cellular telephone technology. Click here to read more.

By now I've made it clear that a shift lens is a specialty item. I brought mine to Japan to shoot the skyscrapers. So I'm mighty pleased to have found new use for my shift in crowded places. Although I brought the shift to capture the buildings, it makes for some very strong people shots, as can be seen in this gallery.

The image gallery linked to this article shows some night images of neon-lit buildings in the Shibuya district, and a couple of shots of the crowds during a festival at the Asakusa shrine in Tokyo. Crowds are always extremely challenging photographically; here the shift allows an unusual head-level effect, in the framing with the child. The crowd and the shrine are complementary in the cropped compositions.

After a couple of days of dragging my 24-mm shift lens around Tokyo, I'm quite impressed at its flexibility. My favorite use of the lens is shooting at eye level in the middle of the bustle of the city.

While composing the shot, I adjust the shift quickly so as to create a sense of depth with the help of the crowd at the bottom of the picture. Luckily, crowds of pedestrians snaking across a crossing or flows of cars and taxis are props that are usually available in Tokyo any time you need them, day or night.

There's always an accessory for the accessory. In the case of the shift lens, I've paid the $20 or so for a reticulated focus screen to mount in my camera. I hope to have it inserted soon—it's a delicate operation that I hate to do myself. This screen displays a grid in the camera viewfinder that will help me square off the shots. I would encourage my readers to customize their cameras with focus screens that suit their shooting styles.

To my greatest regret, I don't have time to do nutshell reviews while on the road, but you'll be seeing some material on Japanese consumer technology in an additional set of articles. Let me replace the photo discussions with some background on some developing trends in the use of exotic shift and wide-angle lenses with digital small-format cameras.

Next Page: Photographers adapt shift lenses to digital SLRs.

Shift effects have been traditionally the purview of view cameras, but the convenience afforded by the new digital SLRs is now attracting product and architecture shooters to them. Rather than buy specialty 35-mm shift or tilt lenses, some photographers are adapting standard medium-format lenses to shift on the digital SLRs, via Russian-made shift adapters that can be located by searching the Web or eBay. For someone who already owns MF equipment, cost is the obvious advantage here, but quality is an unexpected benefit.

Shifted medium-format lenses can give excellent results when used with a small-format digital body: Even cheap medium-format lenses natively have a larger image circle than a 35-mm design, and their center zone of sharpness is used to best advantage on the digital sensor.

Medium-format lenses that are being adapted by digital photographers come in all price ranges, from the most expensive German-made Zeiss and Schneider glass, through the Japanese Pentax lineups, down to East German and Russian bargain lenses that still have excellent optics.

A similar trend to adapting foreign lenses can be seen with wide-angled lenses. Quite a few professional photographers are now moving to mount Zeiss and Leitz wide-angles on Canon bodies for the ultimate in resolution. These are people who depend on sharp images for their income, and they need the superior performance. Of course, in a few years' time when self-contained digital MF system prices climb down to the $10K mark, the most demanding 35-mm shooters will doubtless move to larger sensors.

Some more laid-back shooters are also experimenting with brands other than Zeiss and Leitz on digital bodies. From what I've read on Internet forums, even obsolete Olympus OM and 42-mm screw-mount wide-angle lenses are now being brought back out of storage to serve on Canon bodies. Some of these old lenses still have a pretty strong bite, and a mount adapter can be had for around a hundred dollars.

When evaluated without reference to its shifting ability, the 24-mm Canon TS/E that I use is markedly soft compared to my Zeiss Distagon 21-mm non-shift. However, the Canon has the shift, and the additional advantage of an auto diaphragm when used on the Canon body.

The problem with the mix-and-match approach is the sacrifice of convenience, as the exotic lenses need to be manually stopped down for metering and shooting. Many are calling for Zeiss to supply lenses for Canon full-frame cameras, but the request has so far gone unheeded. There is a 28-mm Schneider Kreuznach shift for Canon presently on the market, but it is also a stop-down lens.

In the meantime, the auto-diaphragm action of the native Canon lens allows wide-open metering, easy composition and manual focusing, with its bright finder image. The Canon is definitely more convenient to use than the adapted Zeiss, at typical landscape shooting apertures of F8 or F11.

But then, convenience rather than performance is what has been driving the whole 35-mm SLR "system" market for a long time. With the right accessory, these handy cameras can do anything, and when you're lucky they'll even do it well.

Edmund Ronald has a Ph.D. in applied mathematics, but he is currently on a sabbatical as a photographer in Paris.