Posted under Photography
Ever since I found out that Lensbaby had revamped their product lens, I had a case of serious WANT, even though I had only got my 2.0 in July. I’m normally not the type of person to be constantly upgrading gadgets, but I couldn’t help it with the Lensbaby – the Composer’s optic swap system was just too tempting. Especially since I have a fondness for pinhole photography, I was thrilled by the concept of Lensbaby digital pinhole and zone plate optics.
Anyway, I was finally spurred to order the new Composer when Travis and I began planning our DC trip – there are a few places we want to go to where dealing with film cameras isn’t exactly going to be easy (the Air and Space Museum, for one), so I decided to go ahead and get the Composer before we went so I would have a bunch of different options while not having to juggle a bunch of different cameras.
The Lensbaby showed up yesterday, complete with adorable packaging (see above). I have to give mad props to the Lensbaby company, by the way – I ordered directly from them, have had great communication with the company, and received the goods uber-fast. The way they package and market the Lensbaby, too, is brilliant. When you get a Lensbaby, it makes you feel like you’re part of this goofy, camera- and art-mad family that doesn’t take itself too terribly seriously. I’m a fan of that, and as such, Lensbaby now has my fierce customer loyalty.
The Composer differs from the Lensbaby 2.0 by having a focusing ring and tiltable lens. To take pictures with the 2.0, you had to both squish and tilt the lens to get the desired effect, which was a little fiddly to get accustomed to. The Composer is easier to use, since the focusing ring and tilt functions will both stay where you put them without having to constantly squeeze. This is a really nice feature especially for those of us with a Nikon camera, since you have to manually adjust your shutter settings. I guess with other brands of cameras, you can just switch the camera to aperture priority mode, and it will take over dealing with the shutter speeds, but the Nikon just doesn’t comprehend that, so you have to do everything yourself. That’s not a big deal, but the new design of the Composer means that you don’t have to constantly recompose your shot if you discover that you need to change your shutter speed.
The Composer comes with double glass optics, which is the sharpest of the 4 optics options. That’s all nice and such, but I was more interested in what the other optics – Single Glass, Plastic, and the Pinhole/Zone Plate option – would yield. I’m planning on doing a test shoot of a neutral subject using the different optics later on today, but yesterday I spent most of my time shooting with the Single Glass optic. Here’s a pic taken with the Plastic optic, first:
I think this was taken with the Plastic optic as well. Oh, I also got the Creative Aperture kit, too, so this was taken with the star disc in place.
The star aperture cracks me up.
Can’t wait to try making some different shapes with the blank aperture discs that came with the kit.
Like I said, I spent most of the day shooting with the Single Glass optic in place. I could still get a relatively sharp area in focus, but also got odd color effects and lens flares here and there. I never knew exactly what my pictures were going to turn out like, which is a lot of fun for me.
Lens flare:
Surprising sharpness:
The optics were a little more of a pain in the butt to change out than I had expected, but became easier once I stopped detaching the Lensbaby from the camera before I switched them out. I don’t like having to juggle a lensless camera, a camera lens, an optic switching tool, and a new optic all at once. This will probably become easier after I get more used to it, though.
Some more Composer pictures:
More later.
