Rangefinder Magazine
June 2005

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First Exposure by Bob Rose
Lensbabies: Creative Imagery for Everyone

It all started in Portland, Oregon, with Craig Strong. In an effort to replace his Holga film camera with its digital equivalent, he developed a “Flexible Lens Mounting System.” After getting enthusiastic feedback from photographers longing to create unique and fun imagery for their clients, Craig decided to make Lensbabies available to everyone.

A Lensbaby is a flexible lens mounting system that can add creativity to your images. The lens comes with different sized apertures, and photographers can now choose between the original Lensbaby and version 2.0.

Many people have created a special soft-edge effect by somehow sticking a single element glass or plastic lens in front of their camera. But Craig has gone beyond, way beyond that. He found a flexible tubular bellows and a way to simply hold different sized apertures in front of the lens. With the equivalent of a T-mount coupling, he delivers an approximately 50mm variable-area focus and fingertip-controlled tilt/shift lens for just about any 35mm mount camera—for under $100.

It’s much simpler to use than to describe its use. Imagine holding your camera and reaching towards the lens with your fingertips—squeezing uniformly to focus out to infinity, and extending the bellows lens to focus close, really close. That’s just the start because while the bellows is easy to keep in alignment, it’s also easy to tilt and shift the lens off center. No need to learn view camera controls, just watch what happens in the viewfinder and shoot.

You’ll probably want to start using your camera in aperture-priority (“A”) mode since the lens doesn’t have a continuously variable aperture. But there is aperture control, sort of. A little foam donut sits in place against the lens and gives you the equivalent of an f/2.8 aperture. Each Lensbaby comes with a plastic tool that lets you pop out the foam ring and three disks that can be individually inserted and held in place using the foam ring as a retainer. You then add the equivalent settings of f/4, f/5.6 and f/8. (This style of aperture control is called a Waterhouse stop, named after John Waterhouse who came up with the idea of interchangeable lens aperture disks in 1858.) And because of the specific lens that’s used in the Lensbaby, stopping down not only adjusts the amount of light, but also gives dramatic control over image sharpness and optical aberrations, which cause color fringing and halos around the brightest parts of the scene.

And now there are two choices! Lensbaby 2.0 was just recently announced only one year after the introduction of the Original Lensbaby, or as I like to call it, the “Classic” Lensbaby.

Version 2.0 features a high-speed, f/2, coated, high-refractive index, low dispersion optical glass doublet lens instead of the single uncoated optical class element in the Classic Lensbaby.

By comparison, you get a brighter, sharper image, and faster selective focus. There’s also a new style levitating magnetic aperture system with a series of metallized plastic aperture disks giving you the additional settings of f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6 and f/8. The included CellKlear™ Lenspen® can be used to clean the lens and as a tool to change the aperture disk.

Each Lensbaby provides distinctly different results, so you may want to consider having one of each.
While Lensbabies work well with film-based SLRs, they also work very well with digital SLRs. Not only do you get to shoot and easily understand the effect of every movement, lighting situation and camera setting, but these kinds of images lend themselves especially well to further digital manipulation. And for readers concerned about the “magnification” factor of most DSLR sensors, you’ll be happy to know that the screw-in lens cap fits a fairly standard 37mm thread. So you can get both telephoto and wide angle converters designed for video cameras to attach directly to the front of your Lensbaby. (Lensbabies also sells a selection of these lenses.)

A Lensbaby is all about controlling your vision and spontaneous shooting. It’s so easy to be creative. Nothing else matches the flexibility you get by moving the optics and bending light. It’s hard to not want to direct the eye of the viewer deep into every image. So like any other creative tool, you can get some outstanding results, but you have to use it extensively to really understand what it’s capable of.

So how best to show you the potential of a Lensbaby? I called in an expert, Lisa Smith. Lisa has been using a Lensbaby since, well, the beginning of Lensbaby time.

Lisa is passionate about her photography. Her exuberance and curiosity are both entertaining and contagious. Lisa says, “I enjoy showing people something in my photographs they might not have otherwise noticed, especially something intriguing about themselves or the world they live in.

About Lensbabies she says, “The difference between the Lensbaby blur and other blurs, like Photoshop or soft focus lenses, is the characteristic of being gradually more blurred toward the edges.

There is a different quality to the blur. It changes the lights and darks, not necessarily in equal proportion, and it’s always sort of a surprise—imprecise, not mathematically calculated like in imaging software.

Lisa continues, “A Lensbaby image is an artistic expression of a moment with the center of interest enveloped by a little movement. Lensbaby images have an obvious rhythm and harmony.

On making images with a Lensbaby Smiths says, “The experience of making images with a Lensbaby is almost like creating some kind of artistic cinematography. You get to change the way the scene or subject appears and feels so quickly that storytelling elements leap into view very rapidly. By moving and bending the Lensbaby around the scene, your eyes go from subject to subject, and the story grows and develops. I tend to get so absorbed that I begin to lose track of time and place, much like diving into a good book.”

Lisa Smith likes to combine the effects of the Lensbabies with those of Photoshop’s filters as well as the range of nik Multimedia filters (see page 60).

To learn more about Lensbabies visit www.lensbabies.com/. To see more of Lisa’s work check out www.lisasmith studios.com/.

Lisa Smith's Lensbaby Gallery:

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Captions:

1. “This image was taken with a Lensbaby under available light in a music store in a mall. The organic vine-like shapes behind Josh are from a metal sculpture. Seeing the Lensbaby effect as I took the image gave me ideas to further enhance the image and mood later with Photoshop and nik Multimedia filters. Lensbaby imagery is especially well suited to portray creative people like musicians and artists,” says Lisa. (f/5.6 Ring at 1⁄15 second; Canon D60 rated at ISO 800;  

2. “A busy background like this temporary mural in an urban construction project can be very distracting, but with Lensbaby’s help, only the desired elements are emphasized and the distracting ones, like the railings, are alternately imaged to one’s advantage,” says Lisa. (f/5.6 Ring at 1⁄350; Canon D60 rated at ISO 400) 

3. “Lensbaby has a whimsical effect on things, so whenever I’m driving around and come upon something with this potential, I photograph it with my Lensbaby. These red Gerber Daisies were at a corner flower market. The little market is a blue cottage right out of a fairytale. I love the Lensbaby blur on repeated similar objects. With so many bright opposing colors as in this composition, the Lensbaby’s conical field of focus emphasizes and takes your eye right to the focal point of the red flowers,” says Lisa. (f/8 Ring @ 1⁄250; Canon D60 rated at ISO 400)

4. “Images like the one above make people wonder about me, I’m sure. This ‘preserved’ Armadillo was in a used office furniture store in Las Vegas. My Lensbaby is a great ‘license to shoot anywhere.’ People are so curious about this bendable lens, they’ll let you get away with almost anything you want. I love making something out of ‘nothing situations,’” says Lisa. (f/4 Ring at 1⁄8 second; Canon D60 rated at ISO 800; a little Photoshop Unsharp Mask, Selective Desaturation, Contrast and an Extensis Photoframe edge)

Bob Rose joined the photo industry in 1978 after graduating from RIT. As Director of Dark Space Research for Beseler, the Manager of Digital Business Development for Ilford, and VP of Marketing for Bogen, Rose has been a contributor to numerous publications, including the Focal Press Encyclopedia of Photography, and has taught at Parsons School of Design. In 1999 he formed his own company, VMI. He can be reached at: vmi-info@earthlink.net.