New Lensbaby Line

Lensbaby has debuted a new line of lenses designed for creative photography: Composer, Muse, and Control Freak. As with all Lensbaby lenses, these allow photographers to control depth of field by bringing one area of a photo into sharpest focus with the “sweet spot” of the image surrounded by graduated blur. All three new lenses now utilize the company’s Optic Swap system, which allows the user to change the lens optic.

The Composer lens is based on a ball-and-socket configuration that’s designed to deliver smooth, selective focus photography. To focus this lens, photographers tilt the lens to a desired angle then focus with a barrel-focusing ring; the lens stays in the desired position without requiring a locking mechanism. The Composer’s barrel focusing ring is designed to become more sensitive as it approaches infinity.

The Muse lens replaces the original Lensbaby and Lensbaby 2.0 lenses, retaining the ability to focus by compressing the lens and moving the sweet spot by bending the flexible lens tubing.

The Control Freak updates the Lensbaby 3G lens. Photographers compress to focus, bend to move the sweet spot, and then lock the lens in place with a button. The user can adjust the fine focus with a barrel-focusing ring and fine tune the tilt by rotating three metal posts.

All the lenses feature magnetically levitating interchangeable aperture disks that allow aperture settings from f/2 to f/22.

The Optic Swap System includes four interchangeable optic options: double glass; single glass; plastic; and the pinhole/zone plate, an optic cup with an f/177 aperture hole to allow for pinhole photography and an f/19 zone plate opening. The double, single, and plastic optics are all 50mm fixed focal length.

Lens prices: Composer, $270; Muse, $150; Control Freak, $270. All ship with double glass optic installed. The single glass, plastic, and pinhole/zone optics are sold individually or in a boxed set priced at $95.

LENSBABY
www.lensbaby.com