Two years ago I came to know about Lensbaby and their optical system which gives the photographer the ability to have selective focus on the subject , which blurs the photo except for the "SWEET" spot you select. I was not really interested at that time since the "APERTURE" is changed manually by inserting a different aperture every time.

Lensbaby introduced last year the Composer Pro with the sweet35 optic which allows you to change the Aperture from the lens itself without the need to change the aperture disk. I was interested in it and thought of giving it a shot. I bought it from adorama.com at $400.

My personal Experience:

I have received the lens last week, and today I tested it in the field as it's the first day I go shooting in Muscat Festival, as it's a place where I love to shoot portraits and people. And here are my PROS & CONES of the lens from my personal perspective.

PROS:

• Well built and easy to tilt around in a smooth motion
  
• Light and compact which makes it easy to go around with
  
• Easy way to change the aperture from the top ring of the Sweet 35 
• The selective focus along with the wide aperture give a new experience in isolating the object. which makes it easy to shift the viewer's eye to your subject.
  

Cons:

• Overpriced for its optic quality, which for me I think the quality at F2.5 is not usable as you can never get a very sharp image, that's why I use it at F4 and F5.6 most of the time.
• All manual function, the camera couldn't give me any readings and I had to use the Manual mood and the light meter doesn't even help you, thankfully in the digital era you get to experiment.
  
• Dim Viewfinder : While you go to F8 the viewfinder becomes dimmer and it will be difficult to use, that's why I had to move the the Liveview mode.
  
• Evil focus and sweet spot: It's really hard to focus and set the sweet spot and it takes real effort to do so, shooting people is not practical with it unless the model/person is willing to cooperate and stay still for 5 minutes till you get it right. (I wear glasses and I almost got headache after half an hour of shooting)
  

My Final Verdict:

I would say the lensbaby is a great lens to play around and have fun with or to produce a theme in your mind. It works well, at F4 and F5.6 the sharpness is not an issue as long as you get the focus right. I would prefer it on static objects rather than shooting people since it will be very hard to focus while people are moving. And I think by time you get used to it. Finally, it's a lens that you either like it or not, there's nothing in-between.

In this article I am going to talk about Exposure Fusion (EF). A lot of photographers nowadays are familiar with High Dynamic Range (HDR) Techniques. Which is mostly used to capture the high contrast scenes by taking a series of "Bracketed" exposures or shots that capture a wider range of light than the camera can handle in a single shot. After that the photos are blended using any of the HDR software (e.g. Dynamic Photo HDR). Mostly the result with have high level of color saturation along with extraordinary shadow and highlight details. Which again is tone mapped to create the final result.

Exposure Fusion (EF) is new approach to blend the bracketed image. The EF does not require tone mapping step as the result does not produce a photo with excessive dynamic range. Yet the result appears to be more realistic and tends not to exaggerate the tones, colors, shadows and highlights. For me I find EF to be more practical and produces results in which I can feel more natural to the eye.

The example above is made by blending (5 photos of the same scene) of a scene from Bediah Sands at sunrise.  Below you can see a sample of the overexposed and underexposed shots, I have taken 5 bracketed shots then exported them to 16bit TIFF files. After that I used Photomatix Pro 4.0 to blend the bracketed exposures.  The final result of the shot (above)  shows more balanced light in the scene yet looks very realistic and natural. Nevertheless I made little final tweaks and adjustments to the photo in Photoshop CS5 .. From my personal experience sometimes you just need 2 shots to make a perfect blend.

Go ahead try it , it's fun and it expands the limitations of the light range the camera can take.

Happy Fusion to everyone

Camera: Nikon D700
Lens : Nikon 16-35 F4 VR
Tripod : Manfrotto 055 ProB