Lensbaby, baby!

Me holding the Lensbaby and taking a shot. Your middle fingers do the focusing with a bend, + a push or pull!

I first heard about Lensbaby through Conni, one of my favorite rock-n-roll photographers.  (She took our wedding photos!)  She saw that I was getting in to the toy camera craze, and mentioned that I might find Lensbabies fun too.

Lensbabies are a great selective focus lens to add to your camera goody bag.  I consider it an affordable tilt shift lens!  I decided to buy the lens, and give it a try.  I took my first Lensbaby walk around town here in Jersey City and fell in love.   Okay, I fell addicted and obsessed.  It was a challenge, an intense tango of push and pull, a faith crusade to find and focus the sweet spot eye in the midst of a hurricane blur! As you can see, I’m passionate about this lens. FUN FOR DAYS.

To focus my 2.0 I have to use my fingers to manipulate its springy lens by bending, pushing, or pulling on its focus ring.  Tilt, and shift; see?  The difficulty was maintaining my focus position while I was pressing on the shutter.  The 2.0 is a bit harder to control than their other models, but this one was on sale at Amazon.com.  I used the Lensbaby 2.0 for hours in the daylight!

For more photos of my first adventure with Lensbaby visit my Lensbaby Set on Flickr.

This lens arrived in my mail with perfect timing, since my Holga 120N seems to have broken. (I will keep you updated on that at another time.)  I just purchased a Colorsplash lens to go with my Holga, but instead, I used it with my Nikon D70 + Lensbaby for some glorious results!

Check out more photos of the Colorsplash with the Lensbaby on my Flickr!

The results of the lens are either something like a motion blur, tilt shift, a soft fuzzy effect, or of course, that toy camera effect (basically, charmingly blurry)!  The toy camera effect is definitely magnified with a Colorplash.  At a steal for only $69, I can’t believe my luck with this lens!!