A journey with a Lensbaby……WHAT A BABY!
A friend asked if I would give the lensbaby a spin at Siem Reap (PMPE2). What is that? Although I have heard of a lensbaby but using one is another story.
I took the lensbaby back home together with the instruction manual a couple of days before Siem Reap. It was a “Control Freak”..the one with 3 antennas sticking out.
The lens did not have a built-in aperture control instead there was a small canister containing a few round metal disk with a variety of holes drilled into it as aperture mask.. I chose one with an aperture opening that looks like a f8.0. Installing the aperture mask was a breeze. There is a magnetic lever that helped to place and removes the aperture mask from the lens.
The “Control Freak” worked like a tilt and shift lens giving the photographer creative control over the depth of field within the picture frame.
Operation wise is a no brainer once you get the hang of things. Press the 2 knobs together to release the movement > move the lens until some part of it is in focus > tilt, shift or swing, the rest of the image out of focus/in focus > lock the lens movement by pressing a button on the right side > fine focusing using the focusing ring > compose and shoot.
It works on manual mode with all DSLR’s and in aperture priority mode in some DSLRs like D300, D3, 5D MkII, 1Ds MkIII, Sony A900, Pentax K20D, etc.
I had a lot of fun working with this lens, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t.. It is this unpredictability that is a welcomed relief to the boredom of consistent results from the conventional lenses. The lensbaby provided a challenge that I had to search through all my photography knowledge, composition skills and visual story telling to come out with a different view point..
I showed some of the results to June Yap who was an Artist turn photographer. She was hooked and worked on it for a couple of days…..almost refusing to return the lensbaby to me. She wanted to place an order on one immediately
Conclusion
The photos shown here were the combined efforts of June Yap, T.Y. Ooi and Maxby on using this “baby”. The lensbaby opens a whole new world in composition and visual story telling. Working as a tilt, shift and swing lens, it offers the flexibility of a large format camera in a 35mm package. For those who have not worked with a large format camera, this is certainly the lens to try to get a feel of what can be achieved with basic and primary lens movements that has been discarded in the name of convenience and portability.
WHAT A BABY!!!”
More information about lensbaby:-
Lensbaby Products
There are 3 types of lens in the product range:-
1. Muse
2. Composer
3 Control Freak
For more information ….here
2. Swing movements
3. Worker
4. The baby
5. The stare 1
6. the stare 2
7. Example of movements
Last edited by maxby
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