Which lensbaby for video

But now, less than a year later, Lensbaby is going after the motion market with a new kit focused specifically on filmmakers. This is a welcome release, as the improvements with the Pro II—especially the improved metal rotating barrel—will be useful for a film shoot.

If you haven't used the Lensbaby system, it's a mount that allows you to physically tilt the lens in front of the camera, which can create quite dynamic imagery, since it tilts the depth of field along with it.

While there are plug-ins that allow for a somewhat similar effect to be created in post-production, there are several arguments for doing it in camera.

First off, the post plug-ins will never quite capture the actual effect of distortions created by moving the physical lens on set, no matter how sophisticated the plugin. Image created with the lensbaby Sweet50 lens Credit: Lensbaby. In addition, if you know you want something to look a certain way, why put it off to post-production where other cooks might interfere when you can lock it in during production?

On some projects, you don't have the luxury of being involved in post, so image control on set is still a vital skill. Finally, there are situations where, by turning the depth of field, you get certain items in focus that might not be in focus otherwise near and far objects simultaneously, for instance , which can't be recreated in post if they weren't in focus on set.

While the mount itself doesn't require a tremendous amount of physical material stainless steel or plastic, for instance , raw materials are never the real driver of cost in a photographic tool. The big driver is engineering costs and the volume of units they can amortize that cost over.

The PL mount kit is simply not going to sell as well as the still mount versions by a wide margin, but the expense of developing it is roughly the same, so the company has to charge more for each one to make both worthwhile to produce. Considering the tendency of wider lenses to have deeper depths of field, the option of tilting a fish eye to create a shallower focus area can be a valuable tool for directing audience attention.

This whole thing seems like a ridiculous gimmick to me. If you really want this "effect" a simple radial blur should suffice - mask the center, feather the edges - total control. I'd rather spend that money on alcohol This post is meant to show how Lensbaby can be applied to video and to compare some of the optics with our most popular optic — the 50mm Double Glass Optic.

Decca from Lensbaby on Vimeo. Most of my favorite possessions were discovered while hunting at secondhand stores and estate sales. The vintage portable record player featured in this video might be THE most treasured of all my thrift store finds. I thought it would be fun to try and capture some of its charm and magic in a short video portrait, and my Lensbabies provided the perfect set of tools to bring this idea to life.

I like to use the Composer Pro lens body , which houses your optic of choice, the Sweet 35 Optic 35mm focal length which gives you a circle of focus, and the Edge 80 Optic 80mm focal length which gives you either the standard edge to edge sharpness of traditional lenses or a slice of focus. Check out the frame grabs below for a comparison of circle vs.

Last but not least, I also use the 8mm and 16mm Macro Converter. The Macro Converters came in quite handy for this project since I wanted to get right up close to all the details and textures of the record player.

Both optics have a tack sharp spot of focus surrounded by blur — the main differences are focal length and method of aperture control.

Sweet 35 has a 35 mm focal length and an aperture dial built into the optic while the Double Glass Optic has a 50mm focal length and uses magnetic drop in discs in order to control the aperture setting. The drop-in discs are similar to the water house stops used in 19th century camera lenses. Generally with a Lensbaby you use the aperture to control the level of effect for each optic.

So, you will most likely find an aperture with a size of circular focus that you like and then stick with that aperture setting for all of your shots. I used the different optics interchangeably to get all the coverage that I needed.