It's a Lens, Baby!

[Dr Croubie]

So i've been setting up a smugmug website over the past few days (yay, i can finally link to external photos without the TDP-forum-added soft-focus).
As part of this, I've been picking through some of my favourite photos, it's amazing how many of them have been taken using a Lensbaby.
For those who don't know what it is, check out www.lensbaby.com for the rundown.

I started off with just a €100 Double-Glass Muse, and got addicted. Since then I bought the 0.42x Ultra-wide angle adapter, the Single-Glass optic (cheap on ebay), then upgraded to the Control Freak (must remember to sell my Muse one day), and later got a very good deal on a kit with the 0.6x Wide-angle adapter, 1.6x tele adapter, +4 & +10 macro diopters, and the creative aperture kit (with which i've yet to experiment), and most recently found the Plastic optic really cheap on ebay. (All i *don't* own is the soft-focus, pinhole, fisheye, and 35mm, really).

I know, i'm a walking advertisement for Lensbaby. I get a lot of strange looks walking around with my Control Freak attached to my camera, it can look like a giant tarantula eating my hand at times I'm sure.

Anyway, even starting back with the €100 Double-Glass Muse, for the same price as I paid for the Nifty Fifty EF 50/1.8 II, I don't think you can get as much "fun" per dollar as the lensbaby (although much like fisheye, I know it can get annoying after a while).

But for now, I thought I'd share some of my favourites (all taken in the Netherlands with the Muse, while I was still getting used to having to hold it focussed in place to take the shot). Surely I'm not the only one on this board who has a Lensbaby addiction, so please feel free to share all your shots too...


A reflection in water has no depth
(Somewhere near Wassenaar.)


Haagse Bos. (somehow I held my gloveless fingers still long enough to not shake the 1/125s shot)


Also Haagse Bos (in better weather).

[Steve U]

When the UPS van pulls up outside my house and the "missus" says, "Who's that in our driveway?", and I say, "it's just a lens baby." I didn't know there was a whole other world of glass that I could spend my money on.
These pictures look great Doc, especially the first two.
Ohh and I had heard of lensbaby, but I have enough trouble getting pictures sharp with "normal" lenses, but your contribution is an incentive to try the funny little optical device.

[HDNitehawk]

Dr

I have looked them over in the store a few times, read about them. So far the just haven't struck a chord with me that they could unlock a creative genius inside of me.

My wife who isn’t interested in photography, found them interesting. I asked her if she wanted to me to buy her a set and she declined. Of course this still could lay the frame work for buying them in the future.

Your first picture, the reflection in the water is really great, however it is kind of hard to view, the blur on the left side of the picture is so much more pronounced than the right side that it pulls the eye away from the center. I am assuming that you can control the OF area with these lenses and put more in one spot and less in another.

[Jonathan Huyer]

Great shots --- I like the one in the woods the best. The blur effect works very well with the weather conditions.

Meanwhile, I'm keen to see your SmugMug site when you get it complete --- please send the link. And I'm also interested in knowing how you linked the photos from the SmugMug site to this page. I tried to find out how to do that but gave up. However I was able to do it from my Picasa web album.

[thekingb]

And I'm also interested in knowing how you linked the photos from the SmugMug site to this page.

When a photo is selected in smugmug, click share and choose get a link. Then go to the forums tab and copy the medium or large option (can't remember which works best). Then paste that right into the forum editor for you post. It works nicely.

[Don Burkett]

Very familiar w/ the Lens Baby concept, but haven't seen many examples so I'm looking forward to more contributions.

[Jonathan Huyer]

When a photo is selected in smugmug, click share and choose get a link. Then go to the forums tab and copy the medium or large option (can't remember which works best). Then paste that right into the forum editor for you post. It works nicely.

Thanks! That worked great. Much appreciated.

[Dr Croubie]

Thanks for the comments so far guys. The first one I did want to crop a bit, but I like the 2:3 ratio and wanted the tree and the building, then I don't have any spare room to lop off. And the second one i've played with too much, it's gone from low-contrat to high to sepia, still not sure which one I like best...

And for a hint with the linking, don't do what I did.
The way the site is set up (now, at least), is that I've got my Portfolio Galleries, public, for sale, and non-linkable.
Then I've got my TDP-sharing galleries, unlisted but linkable and not for sale (so I can share stuff to here).
I copied those photos from the portfolio gallery and tried to link to them, but the originals were unlinkable so the copies were also unlinkable even though they were in a linkable gallery. So I had to re-upload them fresh to the unlisted linkable gallery to be able to post them here. Confused yet? I sure am. It also took me 5 hours and a tech-support email to figure out why the 'buy this photo' button was greyed out, seems .PNG photos are unprintable (good thing I only had 6 photos to delete and re-save as jpg and re-upload).
The main site is croubie.smugmug.com, i'm going to start a 'website critique' thread later for comments on it (once it's got more than 6 shots in 3 galleries). Or just click the banner from the linked photos above.
Nice to see over 193 views in the Lensbaby gallery so far today via here, smugmug statistics are fun...

[Rocco]

Off topic but.. your signature.. absolutely KILLS me. "An awful lot of electrons were terribly inconvenienced in the making of this post." ha!