Thanks to my lovely wife and her family I got a little bit of Christmas money this year, and thanks to some good fortune the previous year, didn’t have any “OMG I must have one or I’ll never be a good photographer” gear on my list.  So I got to look for something that might be one of those “just for fun” toys.  I considered several flights of fancy, but in the end decided to get myself the Lensbaby Edge 80 Optic.

“What the hell is that?” I hear you say.  This is a special lens that will let you do Tilt-Shift photography.  Sometimes known for making things look “miniature”, but in reality normally used for architectural photographers to control the plane of focus.  Here are some examples.  This is an effect that can be done quite easily in Photoshop by making gradients of decreasing sharpness (in CS6 and higher there’s a dedicated blur tool for exactly this).  The downside of doing it in software (other than it not being “real” of course) is that unless you’re careful you might not un-blur something that should be sharp (i.e.: a tall building for example).  Most people wouldn’t notice the difference of course, but it is always better to do it for real because then you’re actually manipulating the plane of focus.

The Edge 80 is an add-on optic for the Lensbaby system, which is known for letting you manipulate where a spot of focus is and creating some cool different effects.  I already own the Lensbaby Composer Pro, which is required to use the Edge80, which I purchased a while back on sale, and used for a couple of my Steampunk photos.

After playing around I have to admit it’s a fun little thing.  An aperture of f/2.8 is a bit wide I found while playing in a local parking lot. It gave BLUR when I just wanted blur.  It also took a bit to get a handle on seeing what you were focusing on and what the effect would be.  A couple of the reviews I read suggested using Live View in your SLR if you were having issues seeing the effect.  

Also, if you look through the examples I linked to above, you’ll see the effect is really interesting when viewed from above, and the shots here I was standing in the parking lot, so the “miniature” effect wasn’t all that magnified.  Being higher up would help a bit.

Another effect (and honestly, more what I bought it for) is to allow for better control of the focal plane.  If you watch this great video of Gregory Heisler showing his shot of Rudy Giuliani you’ll see how he used a (much fancier, much more expensive) tilt-shift lens to put both the mayor and the Empire State Building in focus, but not the rest of the city. Impossible with a “normal” lens (without photoshop).

It’s a fun lens and I’m really looking forward to doing some more with it.  There are some great examples of portraits using tilt-shift lenses, and if you’re in the Fraser Valley area and want to give something a bit more unique a try, let me know!