Posted by: Tim Lewis aka Paps May 21, 2026

The Lensbaby (Original)

In 2004, film photographers weren’t the only ones who were growing weary of ‘perfect’, sterile images that had suddenly assaulted the population from the digital world. In fact, a photographer named Craig Strong not only felt that way but decided to do something about it. He created a ‘trick’ lens called the Lensbaby.

The prototype was an old Kodak lens and a flexible plastic Shop Vac hose. This would become the squeezable, bendable Lensbaby Original that could dynamically shift the focus point of the (roughly) 50mm lens.

I stumbled across mine on eBay, being sold as ‘new’ from South Korea. I paid just under $100.00 for it, and it was made to mount natively on the Minolta SR line. They were also made for the Canon EF, Nikon F, Pentax K, and Olympus OM mounts. Being a junky for anything Minolta and new, I ordered it.

Although the original release of this lens covered a wide variety of film camera mounts, I have to be honest from the start. This lens would be much easier to use on a digital camera, rather than a film camera, as I will explain. The Minimum focus of this manual lens is around 12”, and the apertures are f2.8, f4, f5.6, and f/8. The Original model is one single, uncoated glass optic. The next model would use multicoated doublets.

Mine came with the original box, apertures (small washers), and the aperture tool. This is important because many used ones, if you look at listings, do not. The aperture washers are extremely important, particularly if you are going to use the lens on a film camera, as I did. I suppose the small plastic tool used to replace them could be worked around, though, if missing.

The apertures and aperture tool.

The use of this lens is fairly simple. Using the lens tool, you place an aperture over the lens and simply push the rubber washer over the top of it to hold it in place. It comes with the f4.0 in place, but using the tool, you can replace it with any of the others.

According to the manual that came with the lens, f2.8 “achieves a diffused, almost impressionistic look”, f/4 is “sharper than the f2.8, but still slightly diffused”, f5.6 is “very versatile” (whatever that means), and f/8 has a “sharper look, but still soft edges”. Essentially, the larger the ring, the more effect you'll see in the images.

I mounted the lens to my Minolta X-9 so that I could use aperture-priority mode to choose the correct shutter speed for me. Using ISO 200 film, particularly outdoors, limited my choices of aperture rings to f/5.6 or smaller. I was unable to test the smaller apertures simply because they would have been overexposed in the bright sun. In fact, at 1/1000th second shutter speed, I was nearly overexposed with the f/5.6, but that’s what I used on all of these test images. Of course, you could always add an ND filter.

The concept is that there is a ‘sweet’ spot in the center of the lens, where everything is in focus. That ‘sweet’ spot varies in size with each aperture, but as you bend the flexible lens barrel, it moves to an area of your choosing and throws everything around it into a kind of motion-blur. As you’ll see, not bending the lens at all still blurs everything around the outside of the spot, but bending it, even a little, really exaggerates the blur effect.

Not bending the Lensbaby still blurs the edges.

The effect is not unlike that you can get from a split-diopter or other method. To be honest, if I wanted to use this technique of selective focus on a regular basis, I would go that route. It would allow the use of much better lenses and would give me much better control than the Lensbaby does. This is a game of very high misses and very low hits, with a film camera. At least with a digital camera, you could get instant feedback on your image and take more until you get what you want.

The first thing that I noticed when using it is that it’s really not difficult to manipulate the lens with your support hand. I thought this might be cumbersome, but it turned out not to be. The next thing I noticed was that it is very difficult to determine where the ‘sweet’ spot is once you begin moving and bending the lens barrel. Also, the term ‘in focus’ when describing this area of the lens is relative at best. None of my images had a truly focused area, even when I guessed correctly.

It can be argued that the hit or miss focus (even in the ‘sweet’ spot) is the point of the lens. I tend to think that it’s a weakness of the cheap glass used, however, and also the inaccuracy of bending and pulling on the lens barrel. Comparing it to a split-diopeter, I cannot help but to wonder how much better these images would have been if the part that was in focus was REALLY in focus.

In general, the effect seemed the most usable and pleasing on more distant objects. Closer objects made focusing nearly impossible, and nearly every image that I tried to take that way was abjectively unusable. There are simply some conditions where the lens and the effect work better than others, but you won’t know until you go home and develop the negatives. Again, an argument why this would work best on digital cameras, where you can ‘spray and pray’.

THE SNAP:

While the lens is fun and has a certain appeal to the creative side of photography, on a film camera, it would be my last choice. I would feel much more in control of a split diopter that allowed me to use my own glass and come up with more predictable results. Perhaps my experience would have been different with a digital camera. I suspect that this was who the original customer was supposed to be anyway, since it was released at a time when many people were snatching these up.

Is it worth owning and using? I suppose that anything that jolts us out of our normal view and gets us thinking creatively is worth it, but the effect is nothing that you can’t do in other ways. A split diopter or smearing petroleum jelly around a UV filter would give similar effects and possibly even produce better images.