Shallow depth-of-field has been widely touted as a holy grail in digital photography as it mimics the photographic characteristics of 35mm film. With the Lensbaby 3GPL, this concept is taken to another level in which you can have selective focus of a single element in a frame and have the rest of the image bend off out of focus for a very unique view.

It’s not a new concept, by any means, but the Lensbaby brings the swing-and-tilt lens results into a much more affordable range for digital videographers. The PL mount can attach directly to any 35mm or 16mm camera or to many different 35mm adapters for digital cameras.

In my test, I worked with the Brevis35 adapter with Cinevate Flip on my Canon XL2 DV camera. The Brevis35 (see review here) attaches to the Canon’s 72mm lens threads and is supported by a fairly complicated custom rod system. The Lensbaby 3GPL then attaches to the front of the Brevis35 PL mount.

The Lensbaby is a multi-coated optical glass doublet with a focal length of 54mm. The focus is approximately 12" to infinity, but there is no calibration on the focus ring. The lens can accept both 37mm and 52mm threaded accessories such as wide-angle or telephoto converters, filters, etc.

The primary purpose of the Lensbaby 3GPL is to put only one specific area of the frame in focus. One of the best examples of use of the Lensbaby is Janusz Kaminski’s POV photography in the The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, for which the cinematographer received an Academy Award nomination.

The image is manipulated by physically bending the lens to the sides or compressing or expanding it away from the camera on a plastic bellows and then locking it in place with a small button.

The Lensbaby 3GPL can produce quite beautiful results. In the past, to achieve this kind of look on a budget, I had to combine several split-field diopters, which were difficult to stack and properly manipulate for the right look. The Lensbaby makes this effect a snap, but I soon found it works best in a “fishing,” seek-and-find mode rather than any through kind of precise setup. Although the Lensbaby is incredibly easy to use, it is incredibly complex to use precisely. I could fumble into something beautiful, but if I wanted to focus on something specific for a very specific effect, that was difficult to do. Because the Lensbaby mechanism allows the front element to move sideways and compress, there are infinite focal positions available. Getting it into the right position takes finesse and patience, especially with the setup that I tested. The Canon XL2 lens had the variables of focus and zoom, and I had the added complexity and attributes of the Brevis35 and then the Lensbaby had its bellows and a focus ring. Aligning all of the elements with any precision became a bit like trying to herd kittens.

The design of the Lensbaby is really cool looking, but it is much more form than function because everything ends in little round balls which makes it difficult to know what you’re touching at any given moment. Is this the little ball at the end of the focus ring? Is this the little ball that releases the Lensbaby? Is this the little ball that locks it? Or is this just another little ball at the end of the springs? Especially with the Lensbaby at the end of the Brevis35, which was at the end of the Canon XL2 20x lens, I found myself fumbling again and again for which control was which.

You can manipulate the Lensbaby while you’re rolling, but that takes a careful touch for sure. It’s easy to make the movements jerky and sporadic, but much more complex to make the adjustments fluid. When you do achieve fluidity, the results can be very dramatic and very unique, giving the POV perspective of a drugged character or someone waking from a coma or a stylized dream world.

Once you get the Lensbaby into a position, a single little button locks it in place — only as long as you have your finger precisely positioned to press that button at any given moment. If you’re not positioned perfectly with your hand, you’re going to lose the setting by fumbling for the lock. In addition, I often found that if I got the right position set, I would lock it, and then the Lensbaby would settle further and I would lose my setting. Sometimes this was correctable by adjusting the focus ring, other times I’d have to go back to scratch and set it again.

The Lensbaby has its own iris system, which is unique. It comes with a small container of round discs with increasingly larger center holes that are labeled in f-stops from f/2 to f/22. These discs literally drop into the front of the Lensbaby and are held in place with three small magnets inside the lens. To remove them you use this wand device at the end of the iris container that features a magnetized tip. It takes some fishing to pull the iris out, but it is extremely simple to plop another one in.

The look from the Lensbaby 3GPL can be really beautiful and really intriguing, but it works best in a seek-and-find mode; if you’re looking to be precise, it takes a fair amount of finagling.