Since last summer one of my favorite Lensbaby lenses is the Burnside 35. I found many ways of using it, and I also know what subjects it doesn’t work with – at least for me. One of the features I really like in this lens is the swirling effect that happens when I use it at a wide open aperture of F2.8. But the aperture setting is not enough for the swirling to happen, so I set out to find out what else I need for the effect to show up in my images. In my experiment I had some success, but I also found it to be somewhat flawed.

I purchased a large bouquet of sunflowers, because they looked amazing. After about an hour of arranging them in a vase, filled with beans for stability and precise placement of the stems, I had a background ready for the test pictures. I needed the flowers to spread out as much as possible in the two dimensional picture, and this took some trial and error to achieve with the three dimensional objects. I created the photographs in my dining area, where there was plenty of natural light coming in through the windows. The only light modifier I used was a large piece of foam board from Home Depot with one side covered in a silver layer. This helped with brightening the shadows on the right side of the bouquet.

I started out with photographing the bouquet with various apertures. Since these are just test shots, I did not worry much about the sides not being perfect and some stuff showing from behind the black screen.

No Subject-Darkest Aperture-No Vignette	No Subject-Darkest Aperture-Max Vignette
No Subject-Brightest Aperture-No Vignette	No Subject-Brightest Aperture-Max Vignette

From these first four images I learned right away, that

1. the maximum vignette is a great tool for hiding imperfections around the subject, and
2. the maximum vignette at F2.8 did not result in the swirling effect.

Next, I placed another flower in front of the sunflower background. The blue flower subject was 12 inches from my camera, and the yellow background about 2 feet behind it. At the brightest aperture and maximum vignette setting I noticed some swirling, but mostly just blurriness.

Subject at 12″-Darkest Aperture-Max Vignette

Subject at 12″-Brightest Aperture-Max Vignette

I left the bouquet in place at about 3 feet from the camera, and pulled the blue flower at 6″ from the lens. At F2.8 and with the max. vignette I noticed a bit more swirling, mostly on the bottom where the stems and the bud were.

Subject at 6″-Darkest Aperture-Max Vignette

Subject at 6″-Brightest Aperture-Max Vignette

At this point I realized, that I might have set my experiment up kind of wrong. Since the max. vignette seems to create the swirling, if I don’t have something included in the image where the vignette is, I shouldn’t expect much swirling, should I? In order to try to fix this problem I pulled the vase closer to my camera (at about 20″) to fill the frame as much as possible.

Background Filling Frame-Subject at 6″-Darkest Aperture-Max Vignette

Background Filling Frame-Subject at 6″-Brightest Aperture-Max Vignette

I certainly noticed more swirling movement in the image taken at the brightest aperture, but still not as much as I had seen in some of my previously take images, like this one:

I had to stop taking pictures, but I drew this conclusion: to create the swirls, I do need to have a foreground object in my image, kind of close to my lens (6′ is the closest possibility without a close-up filter). The background subject needs to fill the frame, or at least be visible on the sides where the vignette is located. And what I need to experiment with more is the distance of the background from the foreground subject. I think that having the background farther will make the swirling effect more prominent. I’m planning on experimenting some more in the next few days.