Digital Video - July 2008 - (Page 23) and properly manipulate for the right look. The Lensbaby makes this effect a snap, but I soon found it works best in a “fishing,” seek-and-find mode rather than any through kind of precise setup. Although the Lensbaby is incredibly easy to use, it is incredibly complex to use precisely. I could fumble into something beautiful, but if I wanted to focus on something specific for a very specific effect, that was difficult to do. Because the Lensbaby mechanism allows the front element to move sideways and compress, there are infinite focal positions available. Getting it into the right position takes finesse and patience, especially with the setup that I tested. The Canon XL2 lens had the variables of focus and zoom, and I had the added complexity and attributes of the Brevis35 and then the Lensbaby had its bellows and a focus ring. Aligning all of the elements with any precision became a bit like trying to herd kittens. The design of the Lensbaby is really cool looking, but it is much more form than function because everything ends in little round balls which makes it difficult to know what you’re touching at any given moment. Is this the little ball at the end of the focus ring? Is this the little ball that releases the Lensbaby? Is this the little ball that locks it? Or is this just another little ball at the end of the springs? Especially with the Lensbaby at the end of the Brevis35, which was at the end of the Canon XL2 20x lens, I found myself fumbling again and again for which control was which. You can manipulate the Lensbaby while you’re rolling, but that takes a careful touch for sure. It’s easy to make the movements jerky and sporadic, but much more complex to make the adjustments fluid. When you do achieve fluidity, the results can be very dramatic and very unique, giving the POV perspective of a drugged character or someone waking from a coma or a stylized dream world. Once you get the Lensbaby into a position, a single little button locks it in place — only as long as you have your finger precisely positioned to press that button at any given moment. If you’re not positioned perfectly with your hand, you’re going to lose the setting by fumbling for the lock. In addition, I often found that if I got the right position set, I would lock it, and then the Lensbaby would settle further and I would lose my setting. Sometimes this was correctable by adjusting the focus ring, other times I’d have to go back to scratch and set it again. The Lensbaby has its own iris system, which is unique. It comes with a small container of round discs with increasingly larger center holes that are labeled in f-stops from f/2 to f/22. These discs literally drop into the front of the Lensbaby and are held in place with three small magnets inside the lens. To remove them you use this wand device at the end of the iris container that features a magnetized tip. It takes some fishing to pull the iris out, but it is extremely simple to plop another one in. The look from the Lensbaby 3GPL can be really beautiful and really intriguing, but it works best in a seek-and-find mode; if you’re looking to be precise, it takes a fair amount of finagling. DV www.dv.com http://www.sachtler.us http://www.sachtler.us http://www.dv.com
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