Useful knowledge about Lensbaby optics
The Lensbaby website has loads of useful information about their lenses, optics and accessories. The Lensbaby “people” – founders and employees – also run a facebook group, Lensbaby Unplugged,* where this information is elaborated on and other useful tidbits are shared. For my own interest, I have gathered nuggets of info here on this page – perhaps it will be useful to others as well.
* On a sidenote: this is perhaps the most friendly, welcoming and inspiring group for anyone with an interest in Lensbaby, please join if you haven’t already!
Macro
- All LB lenses can be used with third party extenders and tubes. As with any lens, this will result in some loss of light.
- LB macro converters preserve your sweet spot placement with any given amount of tilt, by moving the optic – but not the ball and socket mechanism of the Composer – forward.
- Extension tubes move everything forward, making it possible to tilt your sweet spot off the long end of an image even when using a full frame sensor.
- All optics and lenses have their minimum focusing distance listed on the product page.
- Blog post by Kathleen Clemons on how the compression caused by longer focal length will be useful for narrow spaces.
Macro converters or macro filters?
- The macro converters (right) magnify the center of your optic’s image circle, making Sweet lenses have a bigger sweet spot. Macro filters (left) keep your sweet spot small.
- The shorter the focal length the more the magnification with macro converters. The longer the focal length the more the magnification with the macro filters.
