Lensbaby Composer Nikon Lens

The original Lensbaby and Lensbaby 2 were designed to restore a sense of random spontaneity to photography. Holga-esque elements and 'squeeze to focus' meant that every picture you took was in a certain sense a guess, even on a single lens reflex. You can still get something like the original Lensbaby in the form of the Lensbaby Muse, but if you want to retain the extreme blurring and distortion of the original while having a degree of control and repeatability, the Lensbaby Composer is probably what you are looking for.

If you've never used a Lensbaby, it is a relatively low quality compound lens with the front and the back connected not by a rigid tube, but by a flexible collar. With this, you can push and pull the front lens to focus, but also move it off axis, giving you the effects of a Tilt/Shift lens. However, unlike a studio tilt/shift which is designed to give you the maximum in terms of absolute quality, at a significant cost in spontaneity, the Lensbaby throws optical quality to the winds, and gives you something you just move and shoot.

This is all fully manual, of course -- even to the extent that changing the aperture requires you to physically swap out aperture rings. Most modern cameras should be able to do something in the way of auto-exposure, by varying the shutter speed or the ISO, but you may well find that the results are unpredictable -- as is almost everything about a Lensbaby.

If this sounds like a recipe for disaster, think again. By removing any pretence at pixel-level sharpness or absence of distortion, the Lensbaby sets you free to just take pictures, in exactly the way that Holga cameras freed up a new generation of art photographers to experiment with the weird and wonderful. Unlike a Holga, you get all the benefits of digital, plus whatever further refinements your camera of choice has.

As mentioned, the original Lensbaby has you physically pushing, pulling and twisting the lens. The Composer is a much more refined machine, allowing you to turn a dial to focus, and also to lock the position of the front optic relative to the back so that, having established the optical properties, you can then work on the composition, or, perhaps, just go off and have a cup of tea before taking the all important shot.

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Photographically, what does this all mean? You may have seen the kind of blurry/sharp photos of bright flowers which were used to market the early Lensbabies. This kind of thing doesn't really do it for me, because you can just as easily put vaseline on a plain filter to get that effect. What I do find, though, is that the Lensbaby gives an extraordinary 'motion' type blur to part of the shot, as well as an extreme of differential focus. The result -- about 1/8 of the time -- is something which conjures up all the feel of a motion picture, but in a still. I treasure the Lensbaby for this otherwise unobtainable movie quality, which simply can't be reproduced in Photoshop. The other 7/8 shots with a Lensbaby? Fortunately they fit cameras these days with a delete button. Even using the Composer, a Lensbaby is still a semi-random photographic tool.

I looked at this lens long and hard before I bought. But, I'm so glad I did!
I'll be honest though, I'd recommend buying the other optics too. For a further £70 - £90 you can convert the composer into a wide angle, telephoto and macro, covering the range of 20 - 80mm.
That then becomes a very versatile lens, combine that with the creative aperture kit and there are countless combinations and effects to achieve, all with the added tilt shift capability.
The manual apertures really get you thinking about the basics of photography. Beware though, no TTL metering on most SLR's, personally it has made me think more about how the camera works and what you can acheive.
Brilliant product, one that will appear in a lot more camera bags in the future.

It takes a little time to get used to the "old fashion" way of taking pictures, but definitely worth it.

The lens is fully manual, it has good construction and design, not as "nikon quality full metal high end lens feeling", but like a kit lens. Aluminium body, feels right in the hand, focus is relatively precise in the zone that you select to be in focus. Only gripe I have with it is that changing the aperture is a fully manual (with magnets) activity and takes a lot of time - this lens is to take pictures to things that you can control or are static...

I'm using it on a D300 and I'm getting good results - you learn to look to photography as the old times - manual. The previous versions of the lensbaby didn't appealed to me because being too sensible to how you hold them. This one stays where you want, which is why I got it.

Quite happy with the purchase. I haven't tried the other accessories yet, there is a lot to explore on this one.