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Author Topic: Thoughts about the Lensbaby  (Read 8199 times)

Henrik Paul

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Thoughts about the Lensbaby
« Reply #20 on: September 21, 2007, 03:31:05 am »

Oh, Nice.

First of all, thanks to all of you who have read my article and another thank you to those who have commented upon it. I think it's a new record for the number of luminouslandscapeians that have read an article I've written. Thank you.

Secondly, I apparently forgot to mention that I posted that article (and also the original post) the night before I went for a one-week through-and-though tourist vacation to Crete, so I have been unable to react to your comments. For that, I apologize.

So, I'll try to give some answers to some comments along this thread:

usathyan: Yeah, I actually wondered also whether they might come up with a ZoomBaby. The construction of one would be interesting at the least. As a side note, the focusing mechanism does actually vary the focal length a tad, but something in the order of +-5mm.

feppe: As akclimber already pointed out, the LensBaby is about more than just edge blur. Unfortunately my photos along the article poorly demonstrated it, but it would be very hard to get a 1:1 copy of the 'baby effect' done in PS. Speculars and bokéh in general, be it round or the custom aperture shapes (like stars, hearts, etc).

I must have forgot to add a link to the Lensbabies website - not that it would be too hard to Google it anyhow  But I'll put a link there, thanks for mentioning it. Links to pricings and such are a bit hard for me to do, as I write from Finland, where pricings are very different to, say, the US - I wouldn't know which pricelists to reference. That, and also that I'm currently independent of any sponsorships or other partnerships, so playing favors to some retailers might get some people questions about my objectivity.

The lens is not sealed, if you mean by rubber gaskets and the sorts you get from the high-end lenses from e.g. Nikkor or Canon. It's plastic all around (excepting the metal screwythingies). Not flimsy plastic, but plastic nevertheless. I haven't yet got any dust inside the mechanisms, but it wouldn't surprise me if some dust puppies might appear - the air has to be pushed to somewhere when contracted, and inhaled from somewhere when released.

akclimber: As for HDR and tripods, that's actually what I did for the first photo with the red house - it's a HDR (cunningly named "HDR attempt" . I'm no wizard with HDR, so it might not look like one. I still need much training in that area...

And yes, the placing of the sweet spot is very hard to get dead on even with some practice. I guess that comes with experience with the gadget.

RogerW: You make an important point - the photos that the Lensbabies produce are hardly everyone would want to have. Some like it, others don't - but that's how most things are anyhow.

DarkPenguin: The amount of blur is easily adjusted by using smaller or larger apertures - that's hardly a real issue. But the fact that it is hard to use with a small viewfinder holds true. The D200 has a relatively large viewfinder (for a crop body), and even I struggle to find the sweet spot at times.

--

*phew* hopefully this gave some answers/insight to those who wanted them (and also to the rest of you).
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