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Lensbaby has announced the Soft Focus II optic, a new 50mm lens in Lensbaby’s Optic Swap System. The Soft Focus II is a new-and-improved version of one of the earliest members of the Optic Swap System. The new version improves upon its predecessor by adding a 12-blade manually adjustable internal aperture to the drop-in magnetic aperture system.
The lens has an F2.5-22 aperture range. When shot at its faster apertures, the lens offers a narrow, flat field of focus and produces soft, dreamy images. The center region becomes much sharper as you stop down, while the corners remain quite soft, at least on full-frame cameras. The internal aperture is adjusted by turning the front of the optic.
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Of the new lens, Lensbaby founder Craig Strong said, ‘At darker apertures, this magical optic produces images with a vintage-lens feel and just a hint of glow. Then, with a turn of the aperture dial, a subtle creative effect grows into an explosion of dreamy glow around the highlights and shadows of my images. I love having the ability to quickly shift the look of my images to match my subject matter.’
The Soft Focus II has just two lens elements in a single group and includes an anti-reflective coating. It is a manual focus lens. The minimum focus distance is 38cm (15″) in Lensbaby Composer lens bodies. On a full-frame camera, the 50mm lens has a 45-degree field of view.
The Lensbaby Soft Focus II optic starts at $179. To use this optic, you must have a Lensbaby Composer. The new Composer II is available for preorder for many camera mounts, including Pentax K, Micro Four Thirds, Fujifilm X, Sony A, Sony E, Nikon F, Nikon Z, Canon EF, Canon RF and L mount. You can also purchase the Soft Focus II for $280 for Canon EF, Nikon F and Sony E. To learn more, visit Lensbaby.
Author:
Jeremy Gray
Source: Dpreview
