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I shot a full portrait session with a Lensbaby Composer Pro II with Sweet 80 Optic. Here’s how it went

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I shot a full portrait session using a Lensbaby Composer Pro II with Sweet 80 Optic. Here’s how it went…

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For years I had only delivered work for clients, something which is imperative for paying the bills. But what I found was that years of shooting for someone else had really stunted my creativity.  Someone pointed out to me that I needed to shoot for me as well as my clients. They told me that it would help me stay at the top of my game and avoid losing my mojo. They weren’t wrong.

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Lensbaby has launched the new Velvet 28 lens for DSLRs and mirrorless cameras

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Lensbaby has today announced their new Velvet 28 lens for both DSLRs and mirrorless cameras. It’s designed primarily for landscape, adventure, travel and street photography and while there may not be a lot of that going on right now, it’s also aimed at videographers.

As with Lensbaby’s other lenses in the Velvet range, the Velvet 85 and the Velvet 56, the Velvet 28 adds what Lensbaby describes as an “ethereal mood” to your shots with a sort of soft glow effect designed to help tackle issues with both flat and harsh lighting scenarios.
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This is the Lensbaby OMNI Creative Filter System

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Lensbaby’s OMNI Creative Filter System was announced earlier this year for pre-order and is now shipping. It’s an interesting system offering some very unique creative options for both photographers and filmmakers. We stopped by the Lensbaby stand at PhotoPlus 2019 to see it in person and find out all about it.

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You can now use eight Lensbaby lenses with Nikon Z and Canon RF cameras

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When Nikon and Canon first launched their full-frame mirrorless cameras, you could only buy accompanying lenses from them. But the list of third-party lenses for Nikon Z and Canon RF has been expanding, and Lensbaby is the latest company to join. They have launched as many as eight lenses that you can use natively with your Nikon Z or Canon RF.

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My review of Lensbaby’s new OMNI filter system

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Lensbaby has become a bit of a household name in recent years and for those of us searching for a more unique look to our images, Lensbaby has been there to provide a whole host of creative solutions. Their latest product is no different, but this time around they aren’t producing a new lens, but instead a ‘creative filter system’ called the Omni.

I was fortunate enough to get my hands on one of these Omni’s prior to launch and I also had chance to test it out on a couple of portrait shoots recently so I thought I would share my thoughts on it here.

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Lensbaby’s new OMNI filter system isn’t like any kind of filter system you’ve seen before

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Shooting through stuff like crystals and whatnot isn’t a new idea, but it’s not one that’s really been developed, commercially. Sure, you can go on Amazon and buy a crystal to shoot through, but it’s not easy to work with unless you want to build some kind of custom rig or just hold it yourself in front of your lens.

Lensbaby, though, has been working on this idea, and they’ve created the new OMNI Creative Filter System. At the moment, it’s essentially a ring that screws onto your lens with magnetic… divots, I suppose, into which you can mount one of several different “filters”.[Read More…]

All these 1966 April Fools photography jokes turned out to be real by 2018

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Along with your gentle reminder about the being extra curious in the next few days, here is a short reminder of how April Fools Day was celebrated in photography blogs over fifty years ago. Well, lacking internet and blogs, they had to pre-conceive their jokes in advance and put them to print in time for magazines to hit the shelves for Aprils 1st. (certainly, not being obvious like Trademarking Bokeh, heh).

In 1966. Tony Karp, a guy who knows his gear* put togetheran extensive Aprils Fools piece for Modern Photography. This included a tilt lens, screen guides, large format reflex, a camera that will give you an electric shock if you screw up, and a few other gadgets.

Here is the amazing thing. Many of those gadgets are now actual products. The Flexagon is very similar to a Lensbaby composer, EVFs can do composition overlays (see this crazy one from the Sony A7III if you drool over EVFs).

Go through the different pieces of gear and see how many of them turned up to be real in the last few years (hint: all). Hit us in the comments with the modern version of these shenanigans.

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Lensbaby Burnside 35 is a 35mm f/2.8 lens with variable bokeh and vignette

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Lensbaby has announced a new creative lens today: Burnside 35. It’s a 35mm f/2.8 wide angle adaptation of the Petzval lens design. Burnside 35 adds swirling bokeh and vignette around your subject, with an effect slider that operates as a second internal iris. This slider lets you can change the shape and amount of swirl in the bokeh; all while adding or removing vignette and center brightness. Something like Instagram filters in real life.

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Tips on lighting with single coloured gels when shooting with a Lensbaby

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Often a scene can be visually confusing, especially if there are multiple colours and objects in focus that are fighting for our viewer’s attention. This simple technique that I’m sharing here uses a single dominant coloured gel to simplify the scene visually, then we can draw the attention of our viewer with our Lensbaby Sweet 50 lens.

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