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DPChallenge Forums >> Side Challenges and Tournaments >> THE JANUARY LENSBABY put your pictures here thread
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12/27/2008 06:04:02 PM · #1
See here for the specifics, of which there aren't many other than all shots must be taken with a LB.

Oh why wait...I know we've got em'...so start posting 'em here peeps.

I'll start...



Message edited by author 2008-12-27 18:12:52.
12/27/2008 06:38:57 PM · #2
12/27/2008 08:49:17 PM · #3
12/27/2008 09:03:48 PM · #4
Watching! Wish I had one :p
12/27/2008 09:11:55 PM · #5
Originally posted by Jessi:

Watching! Wish I had one :p

If you put your male lens and your female lens together alone in your gear bag on a cold winter night, it is possible for a lensbaby to appear 9 months later. I'm pretty sure that's how I got mine.

Here's my second entry, also a little early...


Message edited by author 2008-12-27 21:12:16.
12/27/2008 11:10:15 PM · #6
Ready to get this on as well.

12/28/2008 08:26:57 PM · #7




12/28/2008 11:37:26 PM · #8
12/28/2008 11:47:51 PM · #9
I got home yesterday and found my macro kit waiting for me. So today, I tried some macro shots.

Here are a few I tried with the +4.



Moved from the other thread. I didn't know we had a picture thread already.
12/29/2008 12:23:59 AM · #10
Well, I can post my "All I Want for Christmas" image here now :-)



2nd-highest score for a Lensbaby 3G on DPC, for whatever that's worth...

R.
12/29/2008 01:23:41 AM · #11
First shot with the lensbaby. Just testing to see if things were set right. This is going to be fun.

12/29/2008 12:34:35 PM · #12
I don't think lensbaby is really meant for people (too hard to get a sharp focus), but I'm pleased with what it did for this snapshot test.

12/29/2008 06:50:35 PM · #13
Originally posted by JuliBoc:

I don't think lensbaby is really meant for people (too hard to get a sharp focus) ...


I know what you mean, Julianne. I have suffered the same frustration. I learned to deal with it in a novel (some might say craven) way – instead of fighting against this limitation of Lensbaby’s lack of precision, I have tried to make a virtue of it instead. Bend with it, like a reed in the wind, Grasshopper (if you’ll pardon the dreadful Lensbaby/bending pun).

I’ve been making Lensbaby images for a long time, and so I’ve looked at a lot of the work of others. Most of it’s awful … where the photographer is using the Lensbaby like a drunk uses a lamp post; for support rather than for illumination.

The Lensbaby is not like a Photoshop filter, used to achieve a special effect. Such filters merely change the photograph, but a Lensbaby changes the camera. And it’s grasping that distinction that is the key to making interesting images with Lensbaby.

By ‘changes the camera’ I mean that it makes the camera capable of seeing things that are otherwise not readily visible. And in that sense it’s rather like toy cameras and pinholes/camera obscura. Or even the home-made cameras of Susan Burnstine.. So you have to get to grips with the idea that you can’t take a conventional picture with it (Well you can, but why bother? Then it’s just a bad picture, blurry and distorted for no good reason). Instead you have to start to see in a new way.

Here’s a few of my ‘people’ pictures, all made to embrace the eccentricities of Lensbaby, rather than fighting against them.
[thumb]751013[/thumb] [thumb]751016[/thumb]

They are, alas, only mediocre, but I’m no damn good at photographing people with any lens.

I’m a bit more comfortable with horses.


There is one danger with using Lensbaby, at least for a middle-of-the-road hacker like me. I exchange photographs and wisecracks with Lesley goodman, and though she admits to liking some of my Lensbaby images, she says that they do tend to all look the same. Of course, she’s an artist, equally comfortable with paint, charcoal, clay or camera. She doesn’t need Lensbaby to see in a novel way; she has no choice but to do so. Smartass bitch.

Other genuinely artistic people do, however, make some heart-stopping images with Lensbaby. I’ve previously posted Susan Robertson here, and RKT has been posted too. To those I’ll now add Lucca Lache and Oliver Tudoras..

I am convinced that Lensbaby is not a filter, and it’s not even a lens. Used properly, it’s a different kind of camera.

12/29/2008 07:12:10 PM · #14
I know what you mean, Julianne. I have suffered the same frustration...

Great post, ubique. I feel I'm learning plenty in this January SC and it is still December. We will see if I can translate this information into pleasing lensbaby photos.
12/29/2008 07:15:25 PM · #15
12/29/2008 07:57:05 PM · #16
I started a blog for this, so I'll be posting mine to it. Anyone else?

Here's the link.
12/29/2008 09:26:08 PM · #17


It'll be a few days before I can start commenting, but I will get there...

Bear, any word from Langdon about a Lensbaby gallery?
12/29/2008 09:55:36 PM · #18
Originally posted by krnodil:

Bear, any word from Langdon about a Lensbaby gallery?


Nope :-(

R.
12/29/2008 10:10:46 PM · #19
Originally posted by Bear_Music:

Originally posted by krnodil:

Bear, any word from Langdon about a Lensbaby gallery?


Nope :-(

R.


Art, where are your torches? ;)
12/30/2008 12:34:40 AM · #20

There is one danger with using Lensbaby, at least for a middle-of-the-road hacker like me. I exchange photographs and wisecracks with Lesley goodman, and though she admits to liking some of my Lensbaby images, she says that they do tend to all look the same. Of course, she’s an artist, equally comfortable with paint, charcoal, clay or camera. She doesn’t need Lensbaby to see in a novel way; she has no choice but to do so. Smartass bitch.

you can get the same effect, and some other interesting results with slow shutter speed imho.. :)

12/30/2008 12:39:30 AM · #21
Originally posted by goodman:

There is one danger with using Lensbaby, at least for a middle-of-the-road hacker like me. I exchange photographs and wisecracks with Lesley goodman, and though she admits to liking some of my Lensbaby images, she says that they do tend to all look the same. Of course, she’s an artist, equally comfortable with paint, charcoal, clay or camera. She doesn’t need Lensbaby to see in a novel way; she has no choice but to do so. Smartass bitch.

you can get the same effect, and some other interesting results with slow shutter speed imho.. :)


Are you talking about yourself in the third person? trevytrev thinks that's a bit weird when people talk in the third person.
12/30/2008 02:35:49 AM · #22
Originally posted by goodman:

I exchange photographs and wisecracks with Lesley goodman, and though she admits to liking some of my Lensbaby images, she says that they do tend to all look the same....you can get the same effect, and some other interesting results with slow shutter speed imho.. :)


Funny thing: I recall thinking exactly that thought as I was cruising through the macro gallery the other day... I mean, I like those macro images but they sort of all tend to look the same... except they DON'T, when someone with a different vision executes 'em. Or to put it another way, Ubique and I are both using Lensbaby a lot right now, and I'm not in any danger of confusing this



with this:

.

Or to put it more bluntly, I think that's a bum rap. I think when you take ANY specialized piece of equipment and turn a lot of people loose on it, MOST of the images will look pretty similar, and the people that stick with the program will eventually find their own intrinsic expression. Ditto for specialized processing software: that's why so many folks are moved to say they "hate tone mapping" ot "hate HDRI", or whatever; 'cuz most of the folks that dabble in it never get to the point where they've penetrated the surface and explored less-charted depths, and all that "early work" is pretty much predictable and for the most part forgettable. It's gonna be the same way with Lensbaby.

As for getting "the same effect" with a slow shutter speed, that's simply not true except at the most superficial level. And some really respected Photoshop wizards out there in the world have commented, for what it's worth, that there's really no way to emulate Lensbaby with post processing either. The thing about Lensbaby is that (at least with the 2-element glass versions) you get a small-but-definable crisp & sharp section in the image, and that by tilting the lens you can move that sharp spot around and place it exactly where you want it to be. That's not something you can accomplish with a slow shutter speed, really. Or not predictably, anyway.

For whatever all this rambling is worth, I realize the quoted post is not meant super-seriously.

R.

Message edited by author 2008-12-30 02:36:55.
12/30/2008 09:27:58 AM · #23
12/30/2008 10:36:43 AM · #24
12/30/2008 11:04:14 AM · #25
I couldn't master mine so I sold it - I'll be keeping an eye on this thread for sure.
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