Porcelain for The Jungle
Added 2018-02-08 22:00:01 +0000 UTCI don't usually get companies interested in sending me photography gear to test out. The nature of my work sort of precludes me from working on any sort of marketing campaign. But back in September Lens Baby was nice enough to send me one of their new Velvet 85mm lenses to play with.
They didn't really ask me for anything other than to give it a shot, and while I like the idea of the velvet lens it just doesn't really work for me on stills. We ended up using it a ton for video because it is really fun to use in moving picture, but for still photos the lens was what I would describe as "Softer than you could ever want"
When I first started shooting I was pretty obsessed with smearing Vaseline on filters to shoot intensely soft images, but the advantage of Vaseline is that you can adjust its thickness in important focal areas, allowing for sharpness in the image and composition. For the Lens Baby Velvet you do not have that control, and the way they focus vignette to me makes composition near impossible. I like the rule of thirds, and a lens that is only capable of focusing exactly in the center really doesn't work for me.
The resulting images are cool, but I think the lens is pretty impractical.
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I have one of their earlier lenses, and while I initially thought it was kinda cool, the novelty wore off soon, and the limitations became more apparent. This one does look interesting.... maybe rent-once-or-twice interesting, but I couldn't see needing one enough to justify buying it.
DonovanJ
2018-02-08 22:40:27 +0000 UTC
