Lensbaby Composer Pro II with Edge 50 Optic for Nikon Z

2018-08-17T12:36:30

If you're looking to change up your game, get yourself out of the box, and open up your creativity, this lens will do just that. The construction is excellent. LensBaby has been making selective focus lenses for years, and the Composer is the culmination and refinement of everything they've learned about what photographers want. The body of the lens is a container for the element. Additional elements can be purchased for different focal lengths and effects. The Edge 50 element is about giving you a slice of focus across your camera's sensor with a hard or soft edge depending on settings. I've been doing selective focus for years in post. With the Edge 50, you are now creating that cut of focus in the camera. It's great for video, too.

Michael L.

2016-10-02T17:56:06

Tilt-shift lenses are very expensive, specially when you are only looking for that special slice of focus effect. The Lensbaby Edge 50 offers this at very good price. In this case, the Lensbaby Edge comes with the Composer Pro II which is the base for the modular lens system from Lensbaby. This allows you to swap different optics that offers different looks and special effects. The Compose Pro II feels solid and its metal. It has locking mechanism that when rotated allows the optics to be moved more precisely and to stay in place. The Edge 50 give you that interesting slice of focus that some many photographers are using this day. 50mm works perfect since its a very useful focal length; not too wide not too tele. I wish the focus ring felt more like rubber or metal, I believe its plastic and that the lens would lock itself more firmly on the composer. It wobbles a little bit when focusing but nothing horrible. The lens glows a little bit wide-open but gets much better at f4. To me it works fine wide-open. The idea of the lens is to skew with the focus plane and make very interesting photos. Sharpness and optical perfection is not the purpose of this lens. As a bonus, the Edge 50 optic front section can be moved to achieve a macro mode. Remember its a fully manual lens. It doesn't have a hard stop at infinity so you always have to focus before shooting. On Nikon bodies that support it, you can configure camera to use lenses with without CPU contacts. In this case I configured my camera so that the lens was recognized as a 50mm 3.5. Aperture is control by the aperture ring on the lens so if you want to meter correctly, you have to rotate aperture ring and set the same aperture on the camera so that they match. The AF assistant will work with the lens but live view tends to work better since its more easier to see the effect in real time. Specially if you are trying to focus on two or more subjects. Recommended if you have the patience for it.

Daniel R.