Autumn Portraits with a Lensbaby (vrs. other lenses)

Last weekend Autumn colors finally came to southern Indiana. So I jumped at the chance to get out and capture the leaves before they completely fell off the trees.  What better background for a portrait?

I grabbed 3 lenses — 16-35mm, 85mm, and my Lensbaby Sweet 50 — for variety. Then headed out with my daughter. Great time to take Autumn Portraits with a Lensbaby and traditional lenses.

16-35mm:

I began with the 16-35mm, thinking that it would allow me to include more of the surrounding landscape. Keeping the rules of composition in mind, I  positioned her to peek around a tree to placing her face in the upper third of the frame. Choosing a f/stop of f/5, and focusing on her face, kept her in sharp focus but allowed the background trees to be clearly visible but a little soft.

Spotting the fence, I chose a perspective to showcase the yellow leaves on the nearby trees, and positioned the branches to hide most of the featureless white sky. Again I asked my daughter to move over to the right third of the frame, and lean against the fence. Changing the f/stop to f/10, kept the foreground tree, her, and the background trees in sharp focus.

In the shot below, I used the same lens but shallower depth of field. Choosing f/2.8 brought the attention to her face and let the background go soft.

Note how your eye is drawn to the brightest part of the frame? The featureless white sky on the right is distracting. Solution? Cropping it square– brings her face into the upper third of the frame and eliminates the sky. It was time to switch lenses.

Have you ever used a Lensbaby? The LensBaby Sweet 50 is a great portrait lens when you want to bring out some creative bokeh (blurry background). I use it with the Composer Pro II which is an upgraded metal body for Lensbaby lenses allowing more precise tilt and focus control. (It sells as a set with the Sweet 50 lens for different camera systems from Fuji to Nikon to Sony, or just by itself.)

This lens has a range from f/2.5 to f/22. If you’re new to using this lens, I recommend beginning at f/4 or f/5.6 or putting your camera on a tripod. The focus range is so sensitive at the wider aperatures that it’s similar to using a macro lens.

Both the picture above and the one below were shot at f/2.8. But the bokeh is remarkably different using this Lensbaby Sweet 50.

Lensbaby Sweet 50mm:

As you can see, only a small circular area is in focus. All else — background trees and foreground hands— goes really soft and dreamy. To move the circular spot to her closest eye, I simply held the front of the lens and gently tilted it to the right and checked the focus using the magnifier button on my Sony a9.

(Autofocus never works with a Lensbaby lens. All lenses have to be manipulated by hand to turn the actual lens in the direction of where you want it to focus, then fine tune the focus by rotating the focus ring.)

Even though the white featureless sky has a creamier blur and is less noticeable in this frame, it is still distracting to me and takes away from my subject. So I repositioned the camera to completely eliminate the sky for the shot below. Keeping the aperature at f/2.8, her eyes are still in sharp focus but this time there’s nothing brighter to draw your eye away from her face.

For portraits, I’m partial to both the Sweet 50 Lensbaby and my Zeiss Batis 85mm. The aperature on the Zeiss opens up to f/1.8, creating wonderful bokeh. But instead of using it to take a head shot, I chose to use the longer length of the 85mm lens to compress the trees in the scene. (Compare to the very first pic in the post– the trees are spaced much farther apart with the 16-35mm.)

Choosing f/7.1 kept the leaves, trees and my subject sharp. My jumping daughter is surrounded by yellow and red colors with only tiny bits of white sky peeking through the trees.

Zeiss Batis 85mm:

The parting shot was taken with the same lens, just horizontal. (I know, I know. It’s not a portrait.) I am standing closer to my daughter, and the trees are still compressed. It is probably the first and only time I have not used this 85mm to take a traditional portrait. But my daughter was keen to get on the road for our hiking excursion to Garden of the Gods in southern Illinois…

So, since I didn’t get a chance to really take a “portrait” with the 85mm, I’ll include a shot that I took of my friend, Amy, last Autumn. Nice bokeh behind her at f2.8 with all of her facial features in sharp focus.

Compare it to the shot below of my daughter’s friend Corye.  Same f/2.8 again, but back to using the Lensbaby Sweet 50. Only one eye is in sharp focus. And I’m standing farther away, tilting the lens downward which creates slight linear streaks for a little creative flair.

So there you have it. A quick comparison taking Autumn portraits with a Lensbaby verses traditional lenses.

It’s all a matter of personal preference! Which lens do you prefer?