Zoom-in Online

I love my Lensbaby and I am very excited to see, that the Lensbaby (LB) product line are in the process of a complete overhaul. For those who don't know, these lenses offer selective focus by letting the photographer tilt and bend the lens in any direction. It's also called the poor man's tilt shift lens.

The changes to the LB line will offer a bunch of new options. Not only will they introduce an entirely new lens, the Composer, which looks like it will make it easier to get creative results fast, though creatively adjusting the lens will be limited due to its construction (you can only tilt it in one direction at a time). I've talked to a few photographers, who found it hard to focus with the traditional Lensbabies, and for these people, the Composer might just be the solution.

The re-designed original Lensbaby, called Muse, now supports switching out the optics. Previous versions only let you set the aperture by switching out a small plate inside the lens, but now you can freely switch between glass, plastic and even pinhole as well. Finally, the Lensbaby 3G is being re-launched too, now under the name Control Freak.

As awesome as this is, I do worry that some of the original appeal of the LB might get lost as new features are introduced. What I love about it, is that it's such a simple device that's only as good as the person using it. I very rarely change out the aperture as it is, and I don't see myself lugging a selection of different optics around for my LB. At $150 for a double glass LB Muse, this would be my choice among the new lenses, as well as my recommendation for those who are new to this way of shooting.

Speaking of Lensbabies by the way, I can't help but wonder what kind of awesomeness you could get, if you used it for shooting HD video on one of the new 5D Mk II's.

The photo shown above is one I did, using the Lensbaby 2G (a predecessor to the Muse).

Rasmus Rasmussen is on loan from iStockphoto, where he is part of the image inspection team.