Lensbaby announces Burnside 35mm f/2.8 lens featuring dual apertures and swirling bokeh

 

 

Announced last week and releasing next week, the new Lensbaby Burnside 35mm f/2.8 lens continues the company's tradition of creating distinct and unusual optics. The full-frame lens employs a double-aperture design, which allows for extensive control over focus and bokeh quality.

The lens is designed to deliver high central sharpness but a lot of swirling bokeh and pronounced vignette around the edges of the frame. The amount of swirl can be controlled via one of the diaphragm controls and the other diaphragm lets you dial in your amount of vignette and adjust the overall quality of the bokeh. When you shoot wide open, there'll be softer swirl. When you shoot with a smaller aperture, the swirl will become more detailed and vignetting will be increased - which runs counter to how aperture and brightness falloff typically works.

Like other Lensbaby lenses, the Burnside 35mm is a manual focus lens. It has a minimum focusing distance of six inches (15.2 centimeters), which is quite impressive. The lens' aperture range goes from f/2.8 to f/16 and the internal aperture has six blades whereas the secondary effects aperture has eight blades. The lens is comprised of half a dozen elements across four groups and each element has been coated to reduce ghosting and flare while retaining color accuracy and high contrast.

You can preorder the lens now for Canon, Fujifilm X, Micro Four Thirds, Nikon, Pentax K, Sony A and Sony E mounts ahead of its February 27th release. The lens costs US$500.

If you'd like to see more sample images from the lens, head over to Nikon Rumors.

 

 

(Via Nikon Rumors)