A flurry* of emails asking about the Lensbaby that I used yesterday.
I bought my first Lensbaby when I had only a Canon camera. It was a pretty basic piece of kit.
You moved the bellows up and down to acquire focus, and moved it from side to side to generate swirly effects. There was a lens of sorts inside, and a selection of magnetic rings which your dropped onto the lens to change the aperture. Great fun to use, although keeping focus with your fingers wrapped around the unit was something of a hit and miss affair.
That Lensbaby was sold in the great Canon lens purge of a few years ago. I missed the quirky images it produced and hoped one day that the Lensbaby company would include the Micro-Four Thirds mount in their range. Eventually, they did.
The original lens is still in the lineup and is called the “Muse”. But now there are more sophisticated offerings and I ended up with a “Composer Pro” into which you can insert a selection of optics.
First improvement is the ball-joint which keeps the lens at whatever crazy angle you want. Then there is a focus ring to enable accurate manual focusing. Finally, the lens has an aperture ring which you rotate to set the desired F stop.
Point the lens straight ahead and you will have a sharp centre with the edges washing out, the extent depending on the aperture; the wider the lens, the more crazy the blur.
Move the lens to the side on the ball-joint and the sweet spot will move around the image. In this example it is on the legs of the creature:
The lens itself is of high quality. As well as generating the Lensbaby distinctive look, it can take a very acceptable image. This flower shot from yesterday show is an example of a clear, sharp image, with only the flashes of light off to the side indicating that this is not an ordinary lens.
Working out the location of the sweet spot is not easy and setting up a Lensbaby shot can take a long time; but I find the end results to be interesting and the creative opportunities are endless. Expect more Lensbaby shots.
*Flurry = None
Comments 🔗
2012-05-30| Craig saysHowzit work for video ?
2012-05-31| Robin Parmar saysflurry=none, ha ha ha!
2012-05-31| Robin Parmar saysBTW, I have a tilt adapter that basically does the same thing, but allows me to mount any Pentax lens. They are available in all sort of configurations on the bay.
2012-05-31| Spike saysHopeless
2012-05-31| Grant saysWhat an amazing lens! I’ve really learn’t something here - I thought you achieved those effects by falling out of trees and shooting on the way down, or staggering around in a drunken reel. All the time you had a lens that lets sober people take pissed people’s photos. Brilliant! Can’t wait to see you try it out on Walking Street…