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Any hobby or pastime can get stale after a while without new challenges or ideas to excite you. The folks at Lensbaby have built their company around providing equipment to help photographers get out of a rut. While the whole line is a lot of fun, one of the best accessories you can get for their lenses is the Macro kit. For some reason, Lensbaby images just lend themselves so well to the world of small things.
The quickest way to explain what exactly a Lensbaby is to read about what the company itself says about the lenses:
The Lensbaby is a unique SLR lens that has a sweet spot of focus with blur all around the sweet spot. Unlike a tilt-shift lens, which has a flat field of focus and a slice of of focus from end to end, the Lensbaby field of focus is curved, producing a circle of focus.
The Lensbaby Optic Swap system is a series of 6 different optic inserts that you can use with the Lensbaby body to achieve different effects and image styles. Think of it as taking the engine out of a car and being able to swap in one engine for good gas mileage and
another the next day for trailer towing power. The optic choices are double glass, single glass, plastic, pinhole/zone-plate, soft focus, and fisheye. In addition, there are add on accessories like a wide/tele lens kit, a super wide lens, a creative aperture shape kit, a filter step-up adapter, and this macro lens kit.
The Lensbaby Macro kit consists of two screw-in optical lenses, one a +4 and one a +10 diopter, that look like fat UV filters. Anyone who is has ever used a close-up lens as a budget macro lens on their SLR will know exactly how this lens is supposed to work on the Lensbaby. For that matter, anyone who has ever used a lens filter of any sort will probably be able to figure it out. You simply screw it into the 37mm filter threads of whichever Lensbaby optic you are using at the time. The lenses can be used individually or stacked for greater magnification. The +4 lens allows focus from 6-13in (15-33cm), the +10 lens allows focus from 3-6in (8-15cm), and stacking the two together allows for focus from 2-3in (5-8cm). Typically, adding more optical elements in front of your primary lens is a recipe for lowering the overall image quality, which is why a dedicated macro lens is the preferred choice of serious macro photographers rather than using close-up lenses. However, if you are using the Lensbaby system, you have already decided to trade in some image quality for the stylistic freedom that the system offers. Using close-up lenses to photograph small subjects with the Lensbaby doesn’t detract from the kind of images that you will produce.
Usage is simple enough that there isn’t a whole lot to say about it. Screw one or both of the lenses in and find something small to photograph. It may just be my photography or my eye, but I think the “sweet” spot of the Lensbaby lenses are emphasized when using the Macro kit and the “in focus and sharp” parts of the image stand out more. Perhaps I just focus the Lensbaby more accurately when I’ve got the macro lenses on. Then again, I also won’t claim to be anything special as a macro photographer, I just enjoy it. For what it’s worth, I tend to use the +10 or the two lenses stacked more than I use the +4. But that may just be the subject matter and a “Why stop here when we can get CLOSER!” type of attitude. The Macro Kit comes with a handy little case for the lenses that has enough space to also carry an aperture kit as well. It’s a nice little extra. For me personally, macro shots are the best of what the Lensbaby system has to offer. I’m not exactly sure why that is, but I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that my eyes don’t see a magnified view in my daily life. I am much more fascinated by the tiny parts of the world and much more accepting of the idea that they might look a little dreamy or strange. After all, when I think about bugs or drops of water, I mostly imagine what they look like anyway, so why shouldn’t I enjoy photos that embody that sort of imagination in my mind?
I really enjoy using the Macro Kit with the Lensbaby optic system and would suggest that anyone who has made the investment to get a Lensbaby should have the Macro kit even if they aren’t going to have any other Lensbaby accessories. As I said earlier, I think that close-up and macro images somehow “fit” with the look of Lensbaby optics. At around $37, it isn’t going to break the bank and it really ads a lot of versatility to the Lensbaby system. I rarely have only positive things to say about the gear that I review. But in this case, I can’t think of anything negative. The Macro Kit comes highly recommended as far as I am concerned.
Bottom Line
Pros
Adds a lot of versatility, inexpensive, handy case
