The Photokina Lens Announcement We've All Been Waiting For!

New Lensbabies!!!!!

I've got the Lensbaby 2.0 but have trouble with it. The 3G looked too fiddly for me, but wow, that new Composer sure looks sweet. It will be mine

I'm waiting for a 50mm/f.12 II to go with the new 5D Mk II I'll never be able to afford.

Ahhh... from the "other" post...

Pretty elegant redesign. At $99, the original was fun and "cheap enough" to play with. At $270, that's almost the price of a 50 f/1.4 - a real lens.

AS for ignoring your post, your title - well it just did not grab me - kind of like telling a joke - some people can, and some people...

Oh come on, there's nothing nebulous about the title. The new lensbabies are the major announcement of Photokina, are they not?

tiktaalik wrote in post #6370974
Oh come on, there's nothing nebulous about the title. The new lensbabies are the major announcement of Photokina, are they not?

Without a doubt.

anybody have any experience w/ these lenses?

phsv wrote in post #6372029
anybody have any experience w/ these lenses?

I have the 2.0 version which is like the new Muse model. I love the look of the images but my fingers just aren't coordinated enough to get the consistency I wanted. It looks like the Composer will be good to those of us with fumble fingers. I found an overview/review of it here.

Composer looks very interesting, will almost certainly be a new addition to my gear bag.

Meh. I've never been a fan of these things. A real tilt/shift maybe, but these things?

Though I do admit the new lineup is pretty nice. The Composer is a nice evolution of the design and the interchanging optics is quite trick.

$300 for something that can be done in Photoshop... I dunno.

I dunno. You can also blur the background in photoshop so do people really need lenses like the 85 1.2?

tiktaalik wrote in post #6374937
I dunno. You can also blur the background in photoshop so do people really need lenses like the 85 1.2?

Can't compare the two situations.

Going around the hair in a portrait in order to blur the background means such an emormous quantity of manual work that it justifies the price of any lens. (plus, in this give examplen the 85/1.2 has other advantages which we all know) Yeah, I do believe that the 85/1.2 output (minus the breathtaking sharpness and color rendition) can be simulated in PS... but we're talking hours here On the other hand, the PS rendering of the effect obtained by LensBabies doesn't take the hours, pain and frustration involved in getting a fake bokeh or bg blur... it's rather a matter of four or five clicks, or one click if you have that in an Action.

So, does an effect which takes less than 2 seconds justifies a $300 gadged?
Not for me.
It's a $300 fun toy... nothing wrong with buying toys for fun, really. There's Gary Fong making money out of thin air and this LensBabies guy good for them.

Then maybe you'll take up this guy's challenge to simulate a lensbaby photo in photoshop in 2 seconds.

It's ok if you don't like lensbabies but I have to chuckle how the cry of "Do it in photoshop!" comes up anytime someone doesn't want to pay $$$ for a specialty gadget. Some of us like getting it done in the lens/camera instead. Now, off to buy a bunch of expensive glass that's half grey...