Lensbaby

So I was bitten by the impulse bug yesterday. I went down to Glaziers to go pick up a couple rolls of VS100 yesterday and they were having a street fair - food, clowns, photography dealers, demos and whatnot. They had a Lensbaby rep up from Portland hawking his wares and a pretty steep discount. So while my wallet said No! No! my mouth said yes, and I walked away with a couple of optics and a Lensbaby Composer Pro.

I haven't had a chance to try it out much, just a couple of shots this morning - but I suspect I'm doing something. . .well, not wrong - but something isn't right. I'm shooting on a Canon Rebel XSi in full on manual mode and Aperture Priority mode, and I'm correctly metered so everything should be exposed just fine - but the shots are coming out WAY overexposed. I have to shoot, depending on the aperture I have installed in the Composer, about 1 or two stops below what the light meter says.

I also fired off a couple of shots on my film camera, finishing off the roll of Velvia that was in there - so we'll see tomorrow if it's the camera, if it's something I'm doing or there's something wrong with my Lensbaby. . . .

Hi desslok

I shoot with a rebal xsi or 450d as it is called in the uk ,you can get over exposure but its not a problem if you check your image and adjust the exposure ,the lensbaby is not a point and shoot lens you have to think sometimes about your shot ,plus on a crop sensor like the rebel you can be letting more light into the camera depending on how much tilt you have .With the lensbaby your sweet spot will be too far over with the crop sensor i find just a small tilt is enough as the lensbaby is made to work on all sensors, post your images so we can see what you have shot just play around you will soon get the hang of it and produce great images have fun . i always shot in raw so i can adjust the image if needs be

Hi Dessiok,
Glad to hear you're trying the Composer Pro!
I can't speak to your specific issue, but whenever I shoot Lensbaby I keep my finger close to the EV / Exposure Compensation button. Like all tilt-able lenses, Lensbaby lenses are super confusing for TTL light meters: bending scatters light all over the place.
That said, I find it a little surprising that your XSi is consistently overexposing and am curious to see how your film shots turn out. I usually (unintentionally) under-expose Velvia a little no mater what lens I'm using so maybe your shots will be right on!

Be sure to share them with us!
-Michael

Well, here's my very first shot on the Lensbaby on my XSi - I don't remember what aperture I had in there, but it was one of the higher end ones.

(That'll teach me to take notes as I go. More the fool me).

It was set to AV mode and according to the metering, it should have been dead on. Eventually I did get it more or less in line, but I think I was a couple of f-stops down.

The other one, the one exposed correctly - is the Velvia. Again, no notes so I'm going by memory, but after I more or less nailed it with the digital, I dialed my film camera down to more or less the same settings (about 2 stops underexposed). When I got the slide back today, I had to bump the exposure up just a touch, about half a stop.

So looks like there's going to be lots of trial and error here.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/12/2012 02:59PM by Desslok.