Lensbaby Composer

Lensbaby's Composer Pro II lens features a better build than the original and can be bought along with your choice of lens.

The debate still rages regarding what effects you can achieve digitally in post production and which ones you have to get from specialized glass.  Tools like Photoshop have certainly come a long way in their various blurring and sharpening algorithms as well as many other techniques that were previously only possible to do in camera

A specialised lens with high spherical aberration for selective focus photography.Designed for interchangeable-lens SLR cameras, Lensbaby lenses are suite of replacement lenses that combine a simple optical system with an adjustable bellows that allows selective focus photography. Available for all current DSLR cameras, they bring one area of a photo into sharp focus while the rest of the subject is blurred. The effect is achieved by moving the front of the lens off-axis, thereby shifting the focus 'sweet spot' (area of sharpest focus) to the sides, top or bottom of the frame.

Lensbaby is a company that's been steadily pursuing its own unique course for the past seven years or so, making what it calls 'selective focus' lenses for SLRs that exhibit a distinctive low-fi aesthetic. The basic principle is to utilise optically simple lenses which are deliberately uncorrected for many aberrations, and therefore produce a sharp zone of focus (or 'sweet spot') in the center of the image field with ever-increasing blur outside it. This is combined with a flexible barrel, such that the lens can be tilted and the sweet spot moved around the frame, to focus on off-center subjects. The size of the sweep spot can be increased by using a smaller aperture.