Equipment
Unconventional Lenses to Try on Your Next Photoshoot
It’s common in photography to find a lens you like and stick with using that lens exclusively for several months at a time. I’ve done this myself, with the Canon EF 35mm f/1.4, then the Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II, and now the GF 120mm f/4 Macro. But if you’re feeling stuck in your creativity, there are several specialty lenses that can help you get out of that hole and help you with new ways to shoot creative work to catch the attention of peers and potential clients.
Tilt-Shift Lenses
Tilt-shift lenses are specialized optical tools designed to manipulate the plane of focus and perspective in a photograph. By allowing the lens to tilt, photographers can control the angle at which light enters the camera, altering the depth of field in unique ways. This can create a miniature effect, where subjects appear toy-like due to a narrow plane of focus. Additionally, the shift function compensates for perspective distortion, making it especially useful in architectural and landscape photography.
In portrait photography, tilt-shift lenses can be creatively used to emphasize the subject while keeping the background slightly out of focus, drawing the viewer’s attention directly to the person being photographed. By tilting the lens, you can create a more dynamic composition where specific areas are sharply defined while others are blurred. This technique adds an artistic flair and gives the portraits a distinctive feel that stands out in a sea of conventional images. Experimenting with varying levels of tilt and shifting can be challenging but can often lead to some interesting results. Our friends at SLR Lounge offer a great article on using Tilt-Shift lenses for portrait photography.
As for recommendations, there are a number of tilt-shifts available for most brands, and are generally pretty brand-specific. You can see our entire lineup of tilt-shifts on our website here.
Lensbaby Lenses & Freelensing (Detached Lens Technique)
Lensbaby is a unique brand of creative lenses designed to provide photographers with the ability to capture stunning and artistic images. Known for their distinctive optical designs, Lensbaby products allow users to experiment with focus and blur, enabling them to create various effects that traditional lenses may not easily achieve. These versatile lenses often feature a flexible design, allowing for tilt and shift capabilities to emphasize certain areas of the frame while deliberately blurring others. This ability to manipulate focus in a controlled manner opens up an entirely new world of creative photography.
In addition to standard Lensbaby lenses, the concept of freelensing is likely what birthed Lensbaby in the first place. This involves removing the lens from the camera body and tilting it while capturing an image. This method can produce unique bokeh effects and interesting depth-of-field variations, but it often lacks the control that you might get from a Lensbaby lens system. Together, Lensbaby lenses and freelensing techniques offer photographers a way to break conventional boundaries and explore innovative ways to tell visual stories through their images.
Macro Lenses
Of all the types of lenses mentioned in this article, there’s not a single one I am more familiar with than the macro lens. So much so that I use a macro lens for 99% of all of my work. A common misconception with macro lenses is that you need to shoot macro with them when, in fact, they operate like any other type of lens when pulled away from the subject. An added benefit of these lenses is they generally have superior sharpness because of their design. Their feature set of having a very short minimum focus distance makes them incredibly practical for all types of photography, not just macro-specific.
Generally speaking, most flagship Macro lenses sit in the 100mm range, and where I personally have the most experience. But we have a number of Macro lenses worth trying, and I’ve even written more about Macro lenses on this blog in the past.
Ultra Wide Angle Lenses
There are always sets of rules within photography, and sometimes, it’s fun to break those rules. One of the more common rules is that if you’re shooting portrait photography, it’s best to use a lens with a focal length of 50 mm or more to avoid any barrel distortion that might occur on your subject. However, that stretch distortion that you may get from an ultra-wide-angle lens can provide an interesting 3D effect to your images and give the appearance of your subject jumping out of the frame towards you. While this can also distort features on a subject, it’s also an exceptional way to create a compelling portrait that isn’t so common in your standard photography groups.
Depending on your camera of choice, there are a number of ultra-wide-angle and fisheye lenses that I recommend you try. Canon has a number of offerings in the RF platform, with the RF 10-20mm f/4L as its flagship. If you’re shooting with Sony, I would recommend the FE 12-24mm. Finally, Nikon has the Z 14-24mm, which is an excellent lens.
Do you have any examples of using these types of lenses in unconventional ways? Feel free to share some examples of your work in the comments below.
