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.

The download and upgrade to 1.1.3 were blessedly uneventful. I was amused that the upgrade’s first official action is to prompt iTunes to bring up the screen where you can purchase the new applications. Hint, hint. A quick check of files and functionality confirmed that I hadn’t lost either, so I continued on to the application installation.

Getting the applications is so fast that I have to assume they are locked up in the 1.1.3 firmware and purchasing them merely does an unlock. So, on to the testing.

Maps was the first thing I tried, and getting location was the first feature of Maps I was interested in. As I’m at home and I can only detect my network and those of a couple of neighbors, I wasn’t expecting much. Wow. It zoomed in immediately on exactly the correct location with a startling accuracy. Much faster than GPS, and with no need for a clear shot at the sky. My first impression is that this is a very promising technology.

Notes is about what one would expect: A simple word processor with a timestamp, displayed on a background that looks like a yellow legal pad.

Weather also holds few surprises, except that it initially seems to pine for home, bringing up a report on Cupertino, California (home of Apple). Additional cities are easily entered, and then you can easily move from one city’s report to another with a horizontally scrolling, which is a nice touch.

Stocks gives a simple list view of whatever securities you want to follow. A nice fast glance at a portfolio, with easy toggling between the dollars-and-cents change and the percentage change, with a chart at the bottom of the page for whatever security is selected. The chart has period options ranging from one day to two years, and indicates when the markets are closed.

Mail is a cool, if largely unremarkable, app. It’s pre-configured with server information for Yahoo Mail, Gmail, .mac, and AOL, and has the ability to load in any other system for which you know incoming and outgoing server names.

All told, I’m fairly impressed by the new application bundle. To me, it seems worth the money, although I’m doing this review while sitting next to my wireless router. Obviously functionality away from an accessible Wi-Fi network will impair most of these apps, as everything except Notes relies on an Internet connection. So is this a sales ploy to encourage iPhone purchases among Touch users? If so, it might just work.