Lensbaby’s big announcement at Photokina this year was the new Spark: an affordable plastic lens that offers selective focusing at a low price point of $80. A few weeks prior to the announcement, the company sent us a free copy of the lens to test out.
Read more…
“Entry level” is a huge theme in the photo gear industry this year, and it’s not limited to cameras. Lensbaby has also joined in on the action by announcing its new Spark lens. It’s stripped-down plastic version of the company’s selective focus lenses, allowing you to shoot fun “tilt-shift”-style photos without breaking the bank.
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Digital Trends has published an interesting “inside look at what’s behind the little (but growing) lens-maker that could”, Lensbaby. You might be surprised at the relatively small size of the operation:
Lensbaby is located on Portland’s east side, in a popular yet quiet neighborhood. The headquarters neighbors family homes and local coffee shops, and does something that not very many offices do anymore: makes things. The entire team is made of up some 40 employees, 15 of them in production, working in minutiae with the disciple of devoted inventors. And while there are many things that make Lensbaby different than its competitors (or the closest thing to, given its very unique position in the market). “The main difference is the kind of people that are making the lenses,” says Strong.
Forget the factory: How Lensbaby creates its custom glass [Digital Trends]
Full disclosure: Lensbaby is a sponsor of this blog
DIYPhotography has a neat tutorial on how you can build a DIY Lensbaby lens with cheap parts. The ingredients list consists of a macro extension tube, some electric tape, a macro filter set, and a pipe clamp.
Build a Lynny – A DIY Lensbaby [DIYPhotography]
Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner was randomly selected and is announced below.
The dust hasn’t quite settled from the camera bag giveaway we did last week, but here we are with another awesome one — we’re giving away a Lensbaby Control Freak and Accessories Kit that together are worth $475.
To enter this giveaway, all you need to do is:
There are two ways to enter, and doing both methods will give you 2 entries in the contest, and thus double the chance the win!
As long as the link appears in the tweet, you’ll be automatically entered in the contest.
International entries are welcome! This contest will end in three days on Thursday, February 24th, 2011. We’ll randomly pick a winner using random.org and update this post. Good luck!
Update: This giveaway is now over. We received 1245 comment entries and 715 tweet entries for 1960 entries total. Without further ado, the randomly selected winner is…
99 .. agent 99, that is.
99
Congratulations! Please email editor@petapixel.com to claim your prize (we’re emailing you as well).
Thanks to everyone who participated in this giveaway. Please stay tuned, as we have more things to give away lined up!
A big thanks to Lensbaby for providing the prize for this giveaway!
Lensbaby unveiled a new accessory at Photokina called the Tilt Transformer, which allows you to use Nikon mount lenses on EVIL camera bodies as an instant tilt-shift lens with twice the tilt of normal TS lenses. It’s currently available for Micro Four Thirds bodies, but will be available for Sony NEX cameras as well starting on October 28, 2010. The Tilt Transformer comes with the Lensbaby Composer in a $350 package, or separately for $250.
Read more…
Now here’s a “photomantic” story: Andy met Kayla two years ago through Flickr when they were 2,300 miles apart. Andy just popped the question a few days ago, and hid the engagement ring inside his Lensbaby!
In an announcement published on his blog, Andy writes,
Today I proposed to my lovely fiancée Kayla. We met through a flickr related chat room, and our photography is what brought us together. Over the past 2 years, we’ve become friends, best friends, love birds, and finally, fiancés. Thank you Kayla. Thank you for completing me. Thanks for all the memory cards we’ve filled. Thank you for the countless more we’ll fill in our life together. I love you.
PS: The ring was hidden inside my lensbaby, which I used to propose to her after taking her picture with it :)
Merry Christmas! It has been a week already since we posted our latest giveaway for a Lensbaby Composer, and this one has been our most popular giveaway so far. We received a total of 584 comment entries and 427 entries through Twitter, for a whopping total of 1011 entries.
Without further ado, the randomly selected winner of a Lensbaby Composer and Creative Aperture Set is…
The top item on his Christmas wishlist was:
simple wish: peace on earth
Congratulations! Please send an email to editor@petapixel.com to claim your prize (We emailed you as well).
A big thank you to everyone who participated. We hope you’re all having a fun and safe holiday season!
Image credit: white christmas by brianjmatis
Update: This giveaway has ended. The winner was randomly selected and announced here.
Hello all you awesome readers out there! To celebrate this Christmas season, we’re going to be giving away a Lensbaby Composer lens + a Creative Aperture Kit (a $280 value).
To enter, all you need to do is answer the following question:
What’s the first item on your wishlist for Santa?
There are two ways to send your answer to us, and if you use both ways you will receive two entries in this contest:
If the link appears in your tweet, then the elf Santa loaned us will automatically find it and count it as an entry. If you don’t include the link, then the elf won’t be able to find it and it won’t be counted.
We’ll be picking a winner randomly on Christmas morning – December 25th, 2009. Good luck!
Our Lensbaby giveaway has come to an end. In the past week, we received 566 entries (a new record), with 310 comments and 256 tweets. Our previous record was 510 entries a couple weeks ago when we gave away a Streetwalker backpack by Think Tank Photo.
I think our question, “What is your favorite childhood memory?”, is the most interesting one we’ve asked so far, and many of you wrote quite a bit in response to it.
More about favorite childhood memories in a bit, but first let’s announce the winner of the Lensbaby Composer. The randomly selected winner is…
Climbing in parents’ bed and making clock-faces on Dad’s bare back… with my baby teeth! Yeah, he would half-laugh half-scream but still let me make multiple ones… I think/hope I tickled him more than I hurt him. Thanks, Dad, for enduring with love, you always warm my heart. <3
Congratulations! Please email me at editor@petapixel.com to claim your prize.
Thanks to everyone who entered and shared their favorite childhood memory with all of us! We’ll be giving away something again very soon, so stay tuned!
Here are some childhood memories we received this past week:
elainepeters:
When I little my father was severely ill in the hospital for more than three months over the Christmas holiday. We were told Christmas would be very simple that year one gift for each of us. Then on Christmas Eve total strangers showed up and brought us gifts and food. With no income because my father was in the hospital, I remember my mother in tears of joy and gratitude over their kindness. We never knew who they were or how they knew, but it made Christmas very special that year. Also my mom let us keep up our artificial tree until he came home in March. We wanted him to enjoy Christmas at home , too.
syedahmed:
My favorite memory is watching my dad taking family pictures with his Roliflex camera that was in a brown leather casing. Now I am fourty years old, a father of three sons, and my dad has passed away. I own his Roliflex camera and look at it in amazement everytime I take it out. It brings back fond memories of my childhood and who would have known that after almost four decades I would be into photography just like him. If only one day, my boys can follow my footsteps and enjoy photography as much as I have begun to.
Jennifer Squires Ross (website):
My favourite childhood memory was not having tv because I grew up in such a small town, so small that we didn’t even qualify as a village. There weren’t cable lines running out there (and there still aren’t) and aerial antennas didn’t do much because we were in a valley. We had to make our own fun which included building our own Ewok village and counting and installing our own population sign (262 people in case you were wondering). This small town called Hockley Village is what inspired me to become a photographer.
boris (@borborigm):
Being able to play for hours with a piece of wood
