Digital Trends' Sweet 80 Review

Digital Trends' Sweet 80 Review

Curious about the Sweet 80 Optic? Daven Mathies with Digital Trends has done the research and provides a comprehensive and easy-to-understand Composer Pro II with Sweet 80 review. A unique choice for portraits and more, read highlights from Daven's review here, and find the full original post at digitaltrends.com.

One of the key characteristics of the best portrait lenses is their ability to achieve shallow depth of field. Many modern lenses are engineered to be tack sharp even when shot at their widest apertures, so using shallow depth of field to separate your subject from the background doesnt carry the same sharpness penalty it once did (nevermind the fact that most of the photos we look at today are on small phone screens). But there are other ways of drawing attention to your subject, something that Lensbaby users have been aware of for some time.

The Lensbaby Sweet 80 ($200, $380 with Composer Pro II) is the newest lens for the companys Optic Swap System and the first that brings the classic sweet spot of focus to a true portrait focal length. Lensbaby optics have long been used for portraiture (and the company makes standalone lenses like the Velvet 85 expressly for that purpose), but the focal lengths of the older Sweet 35 and Sweet 50 were not as narrowly tailored to the task.

Thats not to say the Sweet 80 doesnt have other uses. While conducting this review, we found it to be a surprisingly versatile lens even when mounted on a Fujifilm X-T2 with an APS-C sensor, giving the lens an effective focal length of 120mm. The relatively small size and light weight make it easy to pack with you, and there are plenty of subjects out in the world beyond faces that benefit from the Sweet 80s unique ability to hone in on one area of focus within the frame.

Design and Specifications
The Sweet 80 follows in the footsteps of the Sweet 35 and Sweet 50 before it. It is a compact lens with a relatively simple optical design that uses just four elements in two groups. It features an internal aperture (older Lensbaby optics used drop-in aperture disks) with a somewhat limited f-stop range of f/2.8 to f/16, but this works well for the intended use case. Like other Sweet optics, the aperture diaphragm itself boasts twelve blades, which provide circular out-of-focus blur and help smooth out the transitions from in focus to out of focus areas.

Being a Lensbaby, it is available in a wide variety of mounts, including Canon, Nikon, Sony (both A and E), Fujifilm, Micro Four Thirds, Pentax, and even Samsung NX (may it rest in peace). It is full-frame compatible while providing a 120mm equivalent field of view on APS-C bodies and a 160mm equivalent field of view on Micro Four Thirds.

The Lensbaby User Experience
If you are new to the Lensbaby Optic Swap System, its worth an explanation about how it works. The lens is actually two parts: a housing it mounts to your camera body and contains the tilt and focus controls and the optic itself, on which youll find the aperture ring. Our Sweet 80 review unit came kitted with the Composer Pro II housing, but if you already own a Composer you can purchase the Sweet 80 by itself.

The Sweet-series lenses are so named because they produce a sweet spot of focus, a single area of sharpness surrounded by blur that grows increasingly strong the farther away it is from the sweet spot. The size of the sweet spot is controlled via the aperture; wide open, you have a very small area of focus, whereas stopped down, you can more or less get sharp focus across the entire frame.

The vertical and horizontal position of the sweet spot is controlled by the tilt. You can move the sweet spot around the frame by pointing the lens in that direction, meaning it isnt limited to just the center you can zero in on subjects in one corner of the image if you want to.

Finally, the focus ring is responsible for focusing on the correct depth, just like a traditional lens except that this one is fully manual, with no autofocus to help you out.

You can begin to see how working with the Optic Swap System can be complicated. Simply achieving focus now requires three steps: focus (in the traditional sense), sweet spot position, and sweet spot size. (We should add that standard depth of field practices still apply here, as well.) If any one of these is not set properly, your subject will look soft. It can be a frustrating experience in the beginning, but like anything, practice makes perfect. Try it out on static subjects first, focusing on different points in the frame, at different depths, and at different apertures until you get a feel for it.

The Sweet 80 complicates things somewhat because of its longer focal length, which makes it more difficult to hold steady. For these reasons, shooting it is easiest when using a tripod and live view, where you can punch in to preview the shot and make adjustments without moving the camera.

Image Quality and Usability
With mantras like embrace the blur and we are the enemy of perfection, we dont exactly expect Lensbaby lenses to put up class-leading performance in the conventional sense. That said, it is possible to get sharp photos with the Sweet 80 its just not easy.

In our experience, we ended up with more than a few images where the subject was just slightly soft. More often than not, however, this was due to user error. Again, nailing perfect focus with this lens is an art form unto itself. Still, especially with a wide open aperture, critical sharpness is limited to a very small area within the sweet spot, and blur and chromatic aberration creep in quickly. You may think your subject is sharp when looking at the whole image, but punch in to 100 percent and you may find thats not the case.

More important, however, are the subjective qualities that Sweet 80 brings to the table. It turns crowded backgrounds into pleasing, painterly colorscapes while simultaneously spicing up flatter backgrounds and making them a little more interesting. It can draw your attention to the subject or lead your eye into a scene. Its a great effect, albeit one that is perhaps best used sparingly (e.g., dont be afraid to use it at a wedding, but dont photograph the entire wedding with it).

Additionally, the move to an 80mm focal length brings a slight amount of compression distortion, a look generally considered flattering to human subjects (which is another reason why we often see lenses in the 80-150mm range as being good for portraiture).

The f/2.8 maximum aperture is not terribly wide for a portrait lens, but combined with the sweet spot effect, it does plenty to separate your subject from the background. In fact, we preferred to shoot in the range of f/4 to f/5.6 just to keep the sweet spot a little more manageable. The 12-bladed iris is also a nice touch, providing round bokeh circles even when stopped down. You simply dont see this many aperture blades in standard photographic lenses nor anywhere close to this price point and while its perhaps a small benefit, its a unique one, nonetheless.

Daven Mathies with Sweet 80

Our Take
Like Lensbabys other lenses, the Sweet 80 fills a small niche that wont necessarily appeal to every photographer. It is, however, an incredibly unique lens that is both challenging and fun to use. For photographers who prefer to get it right in-camera, rather than resorting to digital filters and effects, it is hard to argue against it. It takes some time to get used to, but the Sweet 80 makes for some stunning results when you get it right, which will help your images stand out both in print or simply in your Instagram feed.

Daven Mathies with Sweet 80