Pixel Peeping and Hammer Hammering

O.K., I admit it, I've been checking out all the stuff on the new Nikon D800, and in perusing lots of user forums, mostly getting pretty useless information, I came across the following.  If you have peeked at camera forums, you have to check this out.

Hammerforum at Lensrental.com

Priceless. Wicked. Accurate.

More With Lensbaby and Extension Tube

The out of focus chraracteristics of this combination are wonderful, definitely something I'm going to keep working with.

Plane Of Focus

I really haven't made much use of my Lensbaby Composer, but did wonder what it would be like for close up work. I do have a set of the close up lenses they sell. These sit in front of the lens and basically act as a magnifying glass which does two things - it shortens the focal length and allows you to focus closer.

I wasn't entirely happy with the results so I dug out my cheapy third party extension tubes and with the shortest on the camera and the Lensbaby mounted to that, and no close up filter, I narrowed the angle of view while allowing closer focusing.

The net difference is less depth of field with any lens, but what's more important - the Lensbaby no longer has the look of a centrally sharp image with vaseline smeared on glass set in front of the lens - the shift from sharp to blurred (and stretched) with the Lensbaby at normal distances doesn't usually work for me, but here, with the tilting plane of focus and extremely limited depth of field (as opposed to lens blurring, the result is very pleasing to me.

It's possible I could achieve the same thing with a fast lens and extension tube, but it happens I don't own any fast lenses at all. I did think to use the 70-200 because it has IS, but it's big and awkward to hold, and you can't shift the plane of focus. I think this might turn out to be an interesting combination, Lensbaby Composer and extension tube.