Ever since photographers used expensive perspective control lenses to create what is now called “the miniature effect,” enthusiasts have been trying to come up with a way of making the tilt shift effect occur on the cheap. For under a grand, LensBaby has a more budget option.
What is it?
While a traditional lens arrives fully built, the LensBaby Composer is more of a “craft your own lens” system, allowing you to replace the main optics section with a different piece of glass as time moves on.
Our review unit is actually made of two specific products: the LensBaby Composer Pro and the LensBaby Edge 80 Optic.
The LensBaby Composer Pro is a short lens with ball movement joint, allowing the lens to change angles. This essentially make your lens point in different directions and blurs specific sides, an effect that can change how objects in a scene are perceived, allowing some things to appear smaller than others.
The Composer Pro normally comes with a small 50mm removable piece of glass with no aperture ring – the Double Glass optic – although the apertures can be faked with drop-in magnetic rings with cut aperture sizes.
LensBaby allows you to replace this piece of glass with better optical pieces, like the Edge 80, a drop in lens that weighs as much as a coffee mug and features an aperture ring ranging from f/2.8 to f/22. The lens can also be switched from macro to regular mode by pulling the outside ring out.
Put together, the LensBaby Composer Pro and Edge 80 create an imitation high-end persepctive control lens for a rough price of $700, compared to the minimum $2000 price tag that normally applies to professional perspective control lenses.
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