The miniature effect you can achieve with tilt/shift lenses is very cool, but I've always wondered: why does the result look miniature? Is it that it has the same visual problems that a cheap-ish lens focused on a miniature would have (e.g. very shallow depth of field)?
(My brain wants to know what my eyes seem to intuit...)
I think it’s to do with focal length relative to the object - the length of the camera and size of the aperture relative to the size of the subject. Less about the cost of the lens, and more about its diameter and the camera’s length, I think? Macro lenses are often long and skinny (but yes, expensive)
The tilt lens gives you a plane of focus that is not parallel to the lens, which can mimic the narrow depth of field of a truly enormous camera, or (more convincingly, a tiny subject)
The “shift” part is a separate movement axis (parallel) and corrects perspective, giving straight lines instead of a vanishing point.
But I have no real idea what I’m talking about, so I hope some optics expert chimes in and explains it — maybe even with a diagram if we’re lucky. Optics are neat.
(My brain wants to know what my eyes seem to intuit...)