The Lensbaby Composer Creative Focusing Effects

Shortly before the Academy Awards, my editor asked me to review the Lensbaby Composer—and what an event to cover with these interesting lenses. Excitedly, my family and I ventured to Hollywood Boulevard just a few blocks east of the Kodak Theatre.

It has always been a bit of a tradition for my wife, my daughter and me to roam around Hollywood Boulevard and take part in the carnival-like atmosphere. Admittedly, I enjoy it more than my lovely wife and daughter do, because I have the additional fun of taking pictures. But in this instance my daughter was intrigued by the Lensbaby and was inspired to take some photos, as well. That afternoon, in fact, she took a beautiful, colorful abstract photo that inspired me in a new dir ection. Given its surreal atmosphere, Hollywood was certainly the best place to experiment with the Lensbaby Composer, the latest version of the Lensbaby system.

Several years ago the first Lensbaby I ever used was the Lensbaby 2.0 and it was a sight to behold. It looked like a piece of garden hose with a Canon mount on one side and a little lens at the other, which is pretty much what it was, albeit nicely manufactured. But it struck a chord with a lot of people, myself included, because of the funky effects it created. The beauty of the design was that the flexible hose allowed one to play with shifting the lens plane away from the film plane (sensor plane). In doing so, the Lensbaby opened the door to creative focusing effects. The only way a pre-Lensbaby photographer had access to similar effects was via large format equipment that is inherently designed to allow lens movements independent from the camera back, called tilting and shifting, and via a few special purpose and expensive lenses made for the other camera systems.

It’s hard to say why so many people were attracted to the Lensbaby’s soft focus effects. One theory I heard was that it had become so easy to get well exposed, perfectly focused images that it was inevitable that photographers would search for the next great thing. Whatever the reason, the Lensbaby has continued to spawn new versions, the latest of which is called the Lensbaby Composer. Lensbaby Composer is quite different from its predecessors. It uses a ball-and-socket system in lieu of the flexible hose, an improvement over the flexible hose, as it is easier to focus. It also has a focusing ring, a new thing for a Lensbaby, that I think makes focusing a lot easier and more precise. And, it is part of a system that allows you to use the basic mount with the ball-and-socket design and substitute one of several lenses in the system: Plastic, Single Glass, Double Glass and Pinhole/Zone Plate. They call it the Lensbaby Optic Swap System.

Why so many options? Well, you get to choose the way you want to mess up your images. The plastic lens is similar to the Holga or Diana plastic toy camera look—everything is soft and there is vignetting. The double-glass lens is the one I used most often, as I like at least a small zone of the image to be completely sharp. The single glass is a compromise between the plastic and the double glass. The pinhole is simply an extremely small aperture, f/177, attachment and it has an optional way to use it called the Zone Plate that adds a glowing halo around the sharper pinhole image. And the options actually go on beyond that. You can also get wide angle, telephoto or macro adaptor rings, each of which screw on to the lens that is residing in the Lensbaby Composer.

Is it just a gimmick? Or is it a lens worth considering for serious work? It may well be for creative and even professional work, but it is certainly not for serious work. The Lensbaby system is for experimenting and discovering. It’s for letting the kid inside of you come out and play. Perhaps that is the best way to get interesting and creative results.
Fortunately, with modern cameras we don’t have to concern ourselves any longer with the price of film. We can just shoot away and trash the garbage. It’s a good thing too, as the Lensbaby is hard to focus. The new Composer is actually a lot easier to focus than the Lensbaby 2.0, which always wanted to snap back to its neutral position. The new design is happy to stay where you put it but the area of critical focus can be so small that it is still a challenge. I have to admit, though, that I am one who relies on auto focus much of the time with my conventional lenses as my eyes are not perfect, so others would possibly have an easier time focusing than I do.

Also, I was living on the edge, so to speak, as I generally was shooting at f/2.8 or f/5.6 and never stopped down more than that, so I didn’t have depth of field working in my favor. The reason I chose to do so was to increase my chance of a dramatic image, even though I was certainly increasing my chance of rejects at the same time.

Speaking of shooting apertures, that is one of the odd things about the Lensbaby. There is no built-in aperture ring. Instead, the Lensbaby comes with a set of aperture discs that are placed in the lens and removed as needed. With no disc the Lensbaby Composer is f/2.0 and it has discs for f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16 and f/22. The aperture disc stays in place by resting on two magnetic contacts and it is removed by picking it up with a magnetic tool, which is conveniently attached to the storage container for the discs.

So as we walked around Hollywood I photographed an Elvis statue, a few colorful passersby, a dramatic red wall with gigantic Chinese characters on it, a family portrait reflected in a car’s window, a mural of Orson Welles, a ukulele player, etc. Then later in the afternoon my daughter took the camera and pointed it up at the tops of buildings, at bottles on the floor, and at cars escorting the glitterati to the Kodak Theatre. The shot I found myself most inspired by was of a piece of yellow police tape that we found in front of us. My daughter placed a ball filled with pink glitter behind the tape and a hint of her hand can be seen through the ball while the street itself became a colorful background (see the first page of the article). It is completely out of focus and all the better for it!

I should point out that I brought out the colors of this ab-stract image with Adobe Camera RAW, using Saturation, Vibrance, Contrast, Clarity and a few selective color modifica-tions as well. And I applied a bit of a vignette utilizing ACR, too, as I did with many of the other photos. In my opinion, the Lensbaby photos seem to be begging for a bit more vignetting, exaggerating what the lens itself does naturally.

For those readers who currently have one or more of the earlier versions of the Lensbaby, it may be helpful to discuss what might be called the upgrade path. The Control Freak replaces the Lensbaby 3G, which had adjustments to lock the lens movement in place (and thus is well suited for landscapes, product shots, etc.). The Muse replaces the original Lensbaby and Lensbaby 2.0. The Composer is a new type of Lensbaby. All of them support the four different swappable optics and also allow you to add the telephoto, wide-angle and macro accessories. There is also a Creative Aperture Set that comes with a star and heart-shaped aperture and five blanks (to make your own) or, alternatively, a set with 10 blanks. A Lensbaby press release, quoting Lensbaby co-founder Craig Strong, best explains why there are three versions: “With the new Composer lens and the Lensbaby Optic Swap System, photographers will be able to choose a lens body that fits their bending style: fast and loose, smooth and precise, or step by step. Then photographers can choose an optic that expresses their individual artistic vision.”

I have been a fan of Lensbaby for a long time but I admit that I used the Lensbaby 2.0 sparingly because I was rejecting too many images due to focusing problems. With the new Lensbaby Composer it is easier to focus than with its predecessor, so it is much easier to get those strange, fun and surprising effects. I do expect to use it more frequently now.
It was a fun and festive day with my family, the Lensbaby Composer and the colorful people on Hollywood Boulevard. The Lensbaby photos are full of surprises and you never quite know what you’re going to get. And on this Oscars day my last pleasant surprise was spotting an acquaintance of mine, photographer Nick Ut, who was also busy taking photos for a newspaper. Nick’s famous photo from Vietnam is sometimes credited with helping to end the war. So I was excited to be able to introduce him to my family. And when he saw the Lensbaby on the camera around my daughter’s neck he said, “That’s cool!” I concur—totally cool!

In fact, I was having so much fun with the Lensbaby I had to try it out elsewhere, too, so I took it down to the Port of Los Angeles where I photographed murals, abandoned buildings, street vendors, boats, power lines, etc. This baby is addictive.

Visit www.lensbaby.com for more information.

Writer/photographer Larry Brownstein is based in Los Angeles, CA. He has authored several photography books, is represented by Getty Images, Alamy and California Stock Photo and has a growing wedding and portrait photography business. His website is www.larrybrownstein.com.