FIGURE C

This is my backyard. Click picture for a larger image.

For those of you wondering just why we moved from New Jersey to Florida, take a look at the above image. That was taken in December and that really is a picture taken from my backyard.

In any case, I took a similar picture with a Lensbaby, shown in Figure D.

FIGURE D

The distortion is from the Lensbaby. The blue color was created in Photoshop. Click picture for a larger image.

The blurring distortion is from the Lensbaby. The image was recorded by the camera as RAW, and when I opened it in Photoshop, I told the RAW processor to use tungsten light instead of normal light, which gave the final image the blue coloring. But I did no other modification to the image. What you see (with the addition of a color effect) is what the Lensbaby recorded.

Pretty slick, eh?

So, how do we rate this product? This was tough. The product is just plain dumb. I mean, why would you want to screw with a perfectly good lens to take blurry pictures? That is, unless you're an "arteest" and want to create really interesting art.

I really wanted to give the product a three out of five, because it's just damned weird. But I couldn't find any functional flaws to reduce the rating. I couldn't drop the rating down because of price. At about a hundred bucks, Lensbabies are priced reasonably for an SLR lens. And it's such a simple product that it doesn't do anything wrong. It's a totally unique product, so it's not like I could say it's the same ol' thing.

So, I'm stuck with rating this thing a five out of five. It works exactly as described, it has no particular flaws other than being weird, it's unique in its class, and it's priced reasonably. We're forced to give Lensbabies a really-friggin-weird five out of five. If you want to take some interesting pictures using a new and unusual tool, don't hesitate to adopt a Lensbaby.

OUR RATING: 5 of 5

Based in Fayetteville, AR, Marc is primarily involved with nature, wildlife, landscape, macro and photojournalism photography. He has had multiple images published, as well as 3 exhibits in 2007. You can see more of his work at http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/marclangille.