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What's New?  |
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| Digital Camera : Lensbaby The Composer for Nikon F mount Digital SLR Cameras and Customer Reviews |
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View multi-angles images
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- Slective focus lens, based on a ball and socket configuration, delivers smooth selective focus photography with unparalleled ease of use
- Features the Lensbaby Optic Swap System
- Magnetically suspended disk aperture system allows f/2.0, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8.0, f/11, f/16, f/22 aperture settings.
- 37 mm threads allow you to attach Lensbaby¿ Macro Kit lenses, wide angle and telephoto conversion lenses, and other filters and accessories
- Note: a Lensbaby does not communicate electronically with your camera body
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List
Price: $269.95 |
New, lowest price : $254.95 |
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| Product Description |
| All Lensbaby™ selective focus SLR camera lenses provide photographers with a new way to control depth of field by bringing one area of a photo into sharpest focus with that Sweet Spot surrounded by graduated blur. By bending the Lensbaby lens, the photographer moves the sharp area around the photo for customized creative effects. |
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Digital Camera Reviews Writed by Customer
[ Total Reviews: 23 Average Rating: 
View Others
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Lensbaby King of Creative
2010-05-26
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The Lens Baby is a must have for any photographer of any level experience.
Great for creative use and control. Optic swap system is brilliant design and ease of use. |
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Just another gimmick? "Fine art"?
2010-03-02
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I took the time to use the Lensbaby Composer on my Panasonic G bodies, my Canon 40D and my Canon 5D Mk II for a total of about 200 purposeful images before writing this review. I didn't want to approach the Lensbaby with any bias or preset expectations, nor did I want to prematurely fire off a trivial review after taking a few casual images. I hope you find this review helpful.
I consider the Lensbaby prices rather steep for what you get, so I held off buying one for quite some time. The Composer looked to me to be the first viable implementation of the Lensbaby, not being attracted to the hand and finger gyrations required to work the other versions such as the Original, 2.0, and Muse. I also wanted to be able to lock in specific shots.
Mechanically, I was disappointed with the operation of the manual focus ring. It is not smooth and consistent during its entire rotation. At the closest focusing distance, the ring rotation is jerky. After a quarter of a turn or so, it smooths out and becomes consistent. Unfortunately, many of my shots are taken at or near the minimum focus distance. For a manual focus lens only, the Composer needs to provide an optimal focus experience. It misses the mark. I can live with it, yes, but it's annoying and shouldn't be happening on a lens in this price range. The mount, however, is machined nicely and fits snugly. The locking ring works well, allowing a good degree of how much friction you want applied to the lens movements. The lens cap is of questionable build quality, and the lettering on the front of it arrived partially rubbed off, or never painted on. Not very attractice for a brand new lens.
Optically, the Composer comes with the Double Glass Optic, consisting of only two glass optical elements, each multicoated. Being a primitive optical formula with erratic (if any?) quality control, you can rest assured of chromatic aberration, vignetting, decentering, flare, veiling, distortion, and any number of optical gremlins that normally leave photographers in painful grimace. Once you start twisting and turning the Composer to move its "sweet spot", what Lensbabians call "bending", those gremlins multiply and intensify. If the Lensbaby teaches you nothing else, it will be an appreciation for the efforts of optical engineers to tackle those nasty gremlins so that we may produce images of technical quality with our regular lenses. However, as strange as this may sound, you're either going to embrace these gremlins and enlist them as agents of creativity, as I chose to do, or you're going to be sending the Lensbaby back to take advantage of their 30-day money-back guarantee, which I was tempted to do.
The Composer includes aperture disks that control the size of the area that is in focus. The Composer has an approximate focal length of 50mm and, sans any aperture disks, it's rated at f/2. But wait, there is quite the rub with that focal length. It's 50mm, true, but only on a full frame sensor body. On cameras with "cropped" sensors, and that covers the majority of cameras being used at this time, the effective focal length changes. On a Canon 7/10/20/30/40/50D and all Rebel digital cameras, that 50mm becomes an 80mm lens. Ugh. Not exactly a versatile focal length. To remedy that, well, be prepared to spend more money. There are two wide angle adapters available: a .42 and a .6. Both of them introduce even more chromatic aberration, and with the .42, hideously so. There are aperture disks for f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16 and f/22. Changing these disks can be an awkward exercise, especially if you're shooting from a tripod and don't want to disturb your setup.
There is a clever optical swap system the Lensbaby employs to switch to a variety of optical setups. I also purchased the single optic system, which is even more primitive than the double glass optic. It's just one glass uncoated element, less sharp than the double optic, and hosting a variant breed of the optical gremlins mentioned above.
The Composer, as it ships, does not have a very close focus distance. If you're going to hang onto your Lensbaby, an investment in the macro kit is a no-brainer. It includes +10 and +4 closeup filters that simply screw into the front of the optic. They are also stackable, but if you do stack, place the +10 closest to the lens, and screw the +4 on top of it. With either of both macro filters, you'll gain the ability to close focus. It is in the macro mode that I find myself making some of my favorite Lensbaby images.
Likely, you'll find the Lensbaby to have a steep learning curve. You'll have to become familiar with how your camera body works in its non-automatic modes (Program, Aperture Priority or Manual), as the Lensbaby has no automation to it whatever. It does not automatically change lens aperture settings, nor will it automatically focus. The camera body does still compute exposure automatically, but bending the lens may throw the auto exposure off, as light is now bouncing around at crazy angles. You'll need to monitor your histogram and know how to dial in exposure compensation. If your body has it, LiveView is a godsend, enabling you to zoom in on areas you want to manually focus. Also, if you change to aperture disks smaller than f/4, it becomes increasingly difficult to focus with accuracy as your viewfinder grows dimmer and dimmer. LiveView uses video gain to brighten your LCD. Invaluable. As for how to move the sweet spot to the desired location, practice makes the closest thing to perfect you're going to find with the Lensbaby. In summary, you'll need to learn to master your camera in its more manual modes and learn the trickiness of the Lensbaby lens movements to achieve successful images.
If you go to the user forums at the Lensbaby web site, you'll be able to view many images taken by its members, for better or for worse. I often find Lensbaby images to fall into the "trick shot" category, akin to those made by fisheye lenses. Overall, I view them as gimmicky. Sometimes you'll find an image that really works for you, but much of the time, they're muddy blurry mis-takes that make you wonder why anyone would want to degrade, even brutalize, the sophisticated sensors embedded in your expensive dSLR.
Be forewarned: you may not enjoy using the Lensbaby, and you may find the resulting images to quickly wear out their welcome. I consider the current Amazon rating to be higher than it deserves to be. There is comfort to be found in the 30-day money-back guarantee -- you'll only be out the return shipping costs and your time.
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I prefer photoshop!
2010-02-28
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Before I bought the Composer, I researched everything about it from its features to the kits, etc. for months. I looked at pictures at the LB gallery site and also on Flickr. I even watched LB fans at Youtube showing OFF their new toys. Anyways, I got the Composer 2 weeks ago and I had to return it after a few days of playing with it. I was really disappointed. I mean I can achieve the same effects that the lensbaby can do through Photoshop. It also felt really cheap, plasticky and I wasn't happy with what it can do. Believe me when I say that I tried to hold onto it but I felt that the money wasn't worth it. I also received the Optic Kit as a gift and still, I wasn't not happy with the effects (I had to return those too). I gave it three stars because the aperture set that came with it made me want to play more with my DSLR camera's AV/manual mode but that's just about as far as my interest with the LB Composer goes. I'd rather spend my money on a nice glass like sigma or canon and just retouch it through Photoshop.
It's probably because I get more creative using Photoshop than using the LB composer. Just my opinion, hope this helps.
:) |
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Dig it.
2010-02-23
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I'd had my eye on one of these for a while, and finally made the plunge. For the most part, I'm very pleased with it. It definitely helps get the creative juices flowing, helping you to see things in a new way. My only disappointment (and I'd known this was coming) is that I've got a cropped- frame camera (Nikon D80) so what would normally be about 50mm comes to somewhere around 75mm. In other words, the focal range is painfully limited, making their wide-angle adapter lens almost an inevitable purchase. (however, I've heard their wide-angle isn't that wide and that the Chromatic Aberration on Lens Baby's ultra-wide angle is terrible. Hmmmmm, so do I want to bother?) Also, the Aperture rings that you have to be some-what-constantly switching are kind of of a nuisance, especially if you're into night photography. (Easily dropped and/or lost.) Ultimately, it would be great if Lens Baby eventually makes a version with f-stops built in, like a regular lens.
However, this isn't a top-of-the-line lens, and they don't claim it to be, so they're able to keep the price reasonable. (it's basically the poor-man's tilt/shift.)
Long-story-short: this is a fun and creative tool to have in your lens arsenal, as long as you're aware of, and willing to put up with it's limitations. All complaints aside, I'm glad I bought it. |
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Fun, addictive and frustrating
2009-12-27
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Hard to say more about this than others have already said but I will try. This is a really fun lens but also a powerful tool. That said, in many ways it is like Photoshop - the gap between cool fun shot and works of art has a mountain sized learning curve.
The double glass optic is a great choice for a starter lens. It has the largest and easiest to find area that is in focus. Finding and identifying that is key to getting predicable results. When you first start using this, I recommend finding a subject you know well that is also far enough away that you can focus on infinity. Then start shooting with no aperture ring installed at all and the lens fixed to straight ahead. This will give you maximum blur on the edges and the best chance of finding the center focus spot. I made the mistake of trying to shoot stuff close up at first and every time I moved even a tiny bit I lost the focus point. Once you get the hang of focusing, unlock the lens and start moving it around. I started with a subject that had a lot of clearly defined lines so I could move the focus and track it. Once you are comfortable doing that, moving to the aperture rings should be a piece of cake. I have posted some images but they dont really do the product justice. i recommend searching for "Lensbaby" on flickr.
One issue I have with my Lensbaby is that the aperture ring tool does not have a magnet strong enough to lift the rings. I have resorted to using a magnetic tool from my tool kit. I think I got a bad tool because it wont even pick up a ring that isnt in the lens. I need to contact Lensbaby about a replacement.
I cant speak for other brands but on my Pentax K200D I can use Aperture Priority mode and get accurate metering. I cant imagine getting decent results without it so if your brand does not support it, you might want to borrow one before taking the plunge. I assumed I would have to use all manual for the first day and frustration did not begin to describe my feelings.
Once you get past the pure joy of bending focus you will find that the Lensbaby is an excellent lens for portraits and flowers. For portraits you can put the focus on your subjects face and by adjusting the aperture determine how much else is in focus and even how quickly it transitions to blur. Same for flowers . And you can shoot using the rule of thirds in a way the really gives depth to the picture. Traditional lens makers have spent millions preventing focus drop-off at the edges forcing photographers to spend hundreds on Photoshop to blur those same edges! Now you can not only get the blur, you can get as much or as little as you want.
I highly recommend adding the Lensbaby Optic Kit as soon as possible. The difficulty progression is Double Glass, Single Glass, Plastic, Zone Plate and Pinhole but the rewards are worth it. If you can only add one lens, add the plastic. It adds an element of predictable but uncontrollable distortion that is just a ton of fun to explore.
Lensbaby is not for everyone. If your photography consists of happy snaps, documenting life or spending hours on getting tack sharp pictures, dont get one. Maybe some photographers can capture candids of people or moments with a Lensbaby but for me, every picture is a 30 second or more affair. You have to be willing to spend time both taking the pictures and learning how to take the pictures. In my opinion, the rewards justify both but you will have to decide for yourself. |
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