I have had this lens for a few days. I ordered it since I was tired of stitching bad photos by hand, and finding everything out of alignment. I do mostly indoor and outdoor architecture, and nature scenes, so needed something with both a panoramic sweep, and to maintain parallelism in my subjects.
The lens allows 11 degrees of shift to either side of center, and it rotates, so shift is either left/right, or up/down. Out to 5 degrees of shift, I am finding the auto settings are not too perturbed. After 5 degrees, some manual setting skill is needed. I will develop more of those soon, I can tell. The lens also allows tilt capabilities, which produce a nice selective focus effect, not unlike a lensbaby. I don't use much of that, but may do some portrait work with it.
The build quality of this lens is rock solid. The optics are very nice. I got a Hoya UV filter, and there is not much light loss, although I think there is some peripheral CA.
Straight through photos (no tilt/shift) are very sharp out to the edge, but this is a manual focus lens. For my work, I set it to infinity and that is no problem. For closer subjects, this could be challenging for someone with old eyes. A focusing screen is next.
I attached a photo above of the US Capitol. This was hand stitched in PhotoShop from two images shot 5 degrees left and right off center. ON A TRIPOD, of course. Note that there is no misalignment of the vertical lines in the Capitol building. In fact, the blend line goes between the first and second bays next to center on the left side of the center section of the building. Even knowing where this line was, I couldn't see it. The alignment and metering is so good that there is a couple along the curb in the lower left, and the woman turns between shots, and there is some double exposure effect, but she is right where she is supposed to be from the previous shot 10 degrees to the other side. The original image was more than 5' wide, so I had to shrink this one down for posting.
Definitely a special purpose lens, but if you want to do good architectural shots (to preserve paralellism) this is the best you can do without going to medium format. IMHO.
Update from June 2008: I notice that someone has posted an image that seems to be taken without using the Shift effect, so that the flagpoles in the image are tilted toward the center of the frame. This happens when the plane of the image sensor is rotated out of parallel with the flagpole, and indicates the lens was not used properly for this shot. The poster there should have mounted the camera on a tripod, rotated the camera body and lens appropriately, and then shifted the lens UP. Then the flagpoles would be parallel with the edge of the frame and not be tilting inwards.
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