Tilt-shift Photography

Using tilt changes the shape of the depth of field (DoF). When the lens and image planes are parallel, the DoF extends between parallel planes on either side of the PoF. With tilt or swing, the DoF is wedge shaped, with the apex of the wedge near the camera, as shown in Figure 5 in the Scheimpflug principle article. The DoF is zero at the apex, remains shallow at the edge of the lens's field of view, and increases with distance from the camera. For a given position of the PoF, the angle between the planes that define the near and far limits of DoF (i.e., the angular DoF) increases with lens f-number; for a given f-number and angle of the PoF, the angular DoF decreases with increasing tilt. When it is desired to have an entire scene sharp, as in landscape photography, the best results are often achieved with a relatively small amount of tilt. When the objective is selective focus, a large amount of tilt can be used to give a very small angular DoF; however, the tilt fixes the position of the PoF rotation axis, so if tilt is used to control the DoF, it may not be possible to also have the PoF pass through all desired points.
View camera users usually distinguish between rotating the lens about a horizontal axis (tilt), and rotation about a vertical axis (swing); small- and medium-format camera users often refer to either rotation as "tilt".