Lensbaby Composer

Having read about this slightly obscure and bizzare lens in Practical Photography, I decided I had to try one. Birthday present time…

The Lensbaby Composer is a concept both simple and fraught with complexity. It is simple lens casing with a ball and socket joint, in to which different optics can be installed – in this case a relatively simple two lens glass optic which is suprisingly sharp in the centre, yet blurs rapidly at the edges. I say at the edges, as this is the whole idea of this strange contraption. The ball and socket joint acts like a tilt-shift lense – but with no corection, so the peripheries go totally out of focus and you can shift the in focus spot round the frame.

And there’s more. The aperture is controlled by a set of drop in Waterhouse stop type rings, but as you can imagine, in the correct conditions the out of focus areas create a dramatic bokeh.

I had a play with the lights from the Christmas tree and my cake. It really is quite odd!

Birthday Celerations (i.e. boozing) aside, I played a little more with this lens. It’s quite tricky to get the focus exactly where you expect, but the effects are quite interesting. These are a few from round the house.

Finally, in the recent snow I had a bit of a play at larger images. I think this is going to take some time to get used to, but I also think it is going to be very fun.