Are lensbabies different than...

[skiphunt]

Are lensbabies different than just messing around with all the warped lens blur control you have in PS CS2? Seems like you'd want a sharp base image, then blur it up creatively in post. Or, does the lensbaby do something else I'm not considering?

[Lensbaby]

Hi Skiphunt,

We get asked this question a fair amount, and it's a good question. There are a lot of ways to answer.

First, I don't usually argue this point too hard, but a number of photoshop gurus will tell you that it is impossible to replicate the Lensbaby look in Photoshop. Jack Davis, Katrin Eismann, and Jim DiVitale are all world renouwned Photoshop Hall of Fame members and all of them will tell you it's impossible. All of them love thier Lensbabies too!

For most people, even if you could replicate the look in Photoshop, the process is quite time consuming. If you use a Lensbaby, you can take 12 different Lensbaby photos in 2 minutes from slightly different angles with slighly different positioning of the sweet spot, and that IS impossible to do in software. Furthermore, you are seeing what you get through the lens and you can see what positioning of the sweetspot makes the most sense and works the best.

From a workflow point of view, a portrait or wedding or editorial photographer can mix in some Lensbaby shots and have a completely different look to show the client, without having to commit all the time to adjusting images. Sometimes the client will love the look, and sometimes they won't. If they do, you might just sell a few extra photos and differential yourself from the competition. If they don't, you have not wasted all that time.

Probably the most important reason though, is that being a photographer and shooting with a Lensbaby is fun, and for most folks moving a mouse around is not as much fun. I recently heard from a photographer that shooting wedding details with a Lensbaby can turn a fairly mundane task into one of the highlights of the shoot.

I hope this is helpful.

Sam

[Gordon]

I'd agree. You probably actually can get pretty close to a lensbaby 'look' in photoshop - no doubt you couldn't copy it exactly, but you could make something passably similar.

But you'd loose all the fun, the accidental happy surprise and take it to a point of control that seems opposite to the point of using something with shoddy optics and quirky usage.

In much the same way you could probably mess up an image to look like it suffered light leaks in a Holga, but that would be missing the point of using a cheap, leaky medium format film camera with a plastic lens and holes in the body.

The beauty of using these sorts of funky photographic tools is in the element of accident and discovery they introduce, not because they can or can't be done digitally. The process is in some ways more important to the effects than the end result.