Lensbaby's New Velvet 56

On January 27th, I posted this tweet to my Twitter followers:

"Photographers- Ever open one of your new photos and feel a huge surge of emotion? I had that today, what a powerful, wonderful feeling!"

     What sparked that surge of emotion? It was when I was just beginning to beta test the newly announced Velvet 56 lens for my friends at Lensbaby. I was really excited to start shooting with this lens because of it's Macro capability, but was unprepared for the amazing look of the images I created or the emotional reaction those photographs would spark. Here is one of the first images I made, right out of the camera:

The lens is fabulous, and allows me to capture the way I see flowers!  The Velvet 56 has true 1:2 Macro capability,  I can get about 5 inches away from my subjects, yet also focus to infinity. It adds an amazing  ethereal glow to the images, which is unlike any other lens I have used. Shooting wide open adds more of that diffused glow, and stopping down captures details with a very unique look and feel. The lens has a solid feel to it, and the manual focus is super smooth.

I did lots of test shots with the same subject at different apertures to get a feel 

for the effect using different F stops:

I tested this lens shooting inside at home and also on several trips:

Home:

 In Florida:

Charleston:

 and Santa Fe:

This lens will also be fabulous for Portraiture, I look forward to exploring more
with it in that area. So far I've only persuaded my cat to pose:

Many more images to come, all of this traveling hasn't left me 

with much image processing time!

Adding this lens to my collection makes me feel that my best work is yet to come, and for a Photographer, there is no greater gift. Thank you Lensbaby!

Happy Shooting!

Kathleen