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Lensbaby has announced the Sol 45, a lens aimed at photographers new to the Lensbaby lineup. The Sol 45 is a fixed F3.5 aperture 45mm manual focus creative lens that offers a relatively straight-forward way to try out the creative effects that Lensbaby is known for. You get the signature Lensbaby tilting focus, sharp center and blurred edges, but in a more restrained package that can help you get the look you are after.
The fixed F3.5 aperture on the Sol means that you only have one `level` of focus + blur to work with. If you are familiar with other Lensbaby lenses, you can typically use the aperture to control how strong of an effect you get: the wider open the aperture, the stronger the effect. This is useful if you want control over how bold or subtle the effect is, but it does add one more decision you need to make when setting up your shot. With the Sol 45, that decision is removed so you have a more consistent experience. This might feel limiting if you are accustomed to using aperture as one of your controls, but it also simplifies the process.
The Sol 45 can be tilted to move the focus to different parts of the frame, giving you plenty of options for composition. If you are coming from another Lensbaby tilting lens system like the Composer Pro II, you will notice that the Sol 45 does not tilt quite as much -- the Sol tilts 8.5° whereas the Composer Pro II can tilt up to 15°. But the feature that I am excited about is the ability to lock the Sol 45 back to the center (or keep it locked so that the focus sweet spot is always in the center). The narrower tilting range combined with the ability to find and lock the focus back to center gives photographers a lot more predictability and control.
If the tilt and blurred edges ...
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