Lensbaby's Burnside 35!

Introducing the Lensbaby Burnside 35! Many of you know that I had an emotional reaction to my first Velvet 56 photos. I am happy to tell you that looking at this Burnside 35 photograph (see below) on the back of my camera caused a similar reaction. It literally took my breath away, I love this lens!

Let's get the technical stuff covered first. This lens is 35mm f/2.8, with a 6" minimum focusing distance. Though it's not a true macro lens,  the 1:2.25  magnification ratio did allow me to get in as close as I wanted.  What makes this lens extra special is a bronze slider on the side of the lens, sort of like an additional aperture adjustment, and it controls the in camera vignette and swirly blur. You can use it to adjust how soft or how detailed you want the swirly vignette blur to be. I think that's brilliant! Being able to control exactly how much blur, detail and darkening I want in my backgrounds allows me to create just the look I want.

Here is the same subject with different vignette settings, note the change in detail and darkening in the backgrounds:

You don't want to get in super close, because the twisty blur and vignette need some background to be most effective. I've been having a blast shooting with this new lens, and cannot wait for Spring to really see what it can do when I have more subject matter here in Maine. It's tough to find full backgrounds for twisty blur in snowy conditions! I am looking forward to photographing Spring flowers and making outdoor portraits.

You can see the Burnside 35 on Lensbaby's website here, as well as a video on the new features:

https://lensbaby.com/product/burnside-35/

Lensbaby also created a page to show what the effects look like on full frame and crop sensor cameras, as well as a comparison with the Lensbaby Twist 60:

https://lensbaby.com/burnside-comparison-images/.

Happy shooting!

Kathleen