« Using Flock to Tame Wild Twitter Storms | Home | Read&Go: eReader With a Nose For News »
Blurring for Effect with the Lensbaby 3G
By Dave Peterson | April 15, 2008
When you tell someone you’ve just bought a special camera lens to aid in making your photos blurry, you’re likely to get a strange look. The Lensbaby 3G is probably not an accessory for snapshots of the family (although that could be interesting), but it adds an interesting level of control to selectively de-focus some parts of the image, resulting in a sense of movement, speed, or an increased emphasis on the part you leave in focus.
The lens is mounted on a bellows that allows the photographer to change focal length across the surface of the lens. You begin by squeezing the bellows in until the image comes into fairly sharp focus. You can then squeeze in further on an edge where you want more concentrated blurring. Touching a stud on the wide ring near the front locks the bellows in the current compression. Then ring at the front can be adjusted to bring your subject into sharp focus. The three focus screws can then be fine adjusted to shape the blurring effect as desired. After the exposure, the bellows can be unlocked by squeezing together the two knobs on the large ring.
As with any photography, practice makes for better results. Aperture is determined by a metal disc with a static opening that is manually inserted into the front of the lens. The Lensbaby comes with a number of different aperture discs.
Some subjects also lend themselves better to the blurring effect. This is the sort of camera accessory that rewards a certain amount of pre-planning in selection of subject and setting. It’s an interesting tool, and fun addition to a photographer’s gadget bag, but may not be worth the cost for everyone, as it does deliver a very specific effect. For easy control of a selective blur, though, it works very well.
If you’re interested in seeing a few more Lensbaby shots I took on my recent vacation, you can find them here on my Flickr Lensbaby page.
The Lensbaby 3G is available for Nikon F, Canon EF, Pentax K, Leica R, and a variety of other lens mounts. The price is $270 - $390, depending on the camera body. Other, earlier generation models are also available as well as one with a PL mount for motion picture cameras.
Topics: Reviews |
April 15th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
It’s an interesting product because it give photographers a fun, creative tool. In a photoshop world, it’s kind of nice to have creative options on the front end, but it limits the ultimate potential of the shot.
It’s kind of like recording audio with effects turned on. You can always add effects in post, but it’s pretty hard to take them away from an original.