Careful readers of AIRC articles know that the shape of their lens aperture affects the quality of the out-of-focus areas of their photos, known in Japanese as “Bokeh.” Now Lensbabies has introduced a Creative Aperture Kit that exploits this idea by manipulating aperture shape to give blurry highlights, which are typically round, distinct shapes such as hearts and stars. They only work with Lensbaby 3G and 2.0 SLR lenses, but add a new creative dimensions that we think will appeal to wedding and portrait photographers.
The Lensbabies Creative Aperture Kit is expected to sell for around $10. Go here to read up on the concept of Bokeh, and here for current pricing and availability of Lensbabies.
For further details about the Creative Aperture Kit, read Lensbabies’ press release:
Lensbabies™ Introduces New Creative Aperture Kit
Portland, OR (February 8, 2007) – Lensbabies, LLC introduces today its new Lensba Kit for use with the Lensbaby 3G and Lensbaby 2.0 Single Lens-Reflex (SLR) lenses. Each Lensba Kit contains one star shaped aperture disk, one heart shaped aperture disk, and five blank disks. Photographers can fashion the blank disks into their own custom shaped apertures using a shaped paper punch (which can be found in craft stores) or a sharp knife.
With the Lensba Disks, points of light in out of focus areas of the photo take on the shape of the hole in the aperture disk. If the photographer uses the star shaped aperture disk, points of light behind the subject appear as glowing stars, giving photographers one more tool to be creative with their cameras.
“These new aperture kits were designed with creative Lensbaby users in mind,” said Craig Strong, the inventor of the Lensbaby and Co-Founder of Lensbabies, LLC. “The attraction of Lensbaby lenses is that photographers can place a precise point of sharp focus anywhere in a picture’s composition. These new Lensba Kits now let photographers easily enhance the appearance of their pictures’ out of focus areas.”
These new aperture disks are made of the same metalicized plastic and work the same way as the aperture disks that come with the Lensbaby 3G and Lensbaby 2.0. Photographers simply drop the disks into the front of their Lensbaby lens, where they are held in place by a magnetic field. The new Lensba Kit is available now for $9.99 on www.lensbabies.com, by calling 877-536-7222 / 971-223-5662, and from select specialty photo stores.
The Lensbaby 3G and Lensbaby 2.0 SLR lenses are compatible with a range of popular SLR camera bodies from Canon, Nikon, Olympus/Panasonic, Pentax/Samsung, Sony/Minolta and Leica. For more information about these lenses please visit www.lensbabies.com.
