Yesterday I met up with a photographer friend for a few minutes at Sherman’s Gardens. This is one of my favorite places to take floral images at. Knowing how much I like getting close to flowers, and that the Burnside 35 only lets me do close ups from 6″, I had ordered some Close up filters. When I left home I saw our mailman by the mailboxes, and I asked him if he maybe had a package for me. Luckily he did, and I was able to try out the Burnside with some magnification.
First I took test shots at a spot where I had taken one with the Sweet 50 before. They weren’t composed exactly the same way, but I liked the Sweet 50 image much more at this place than the Burnside 35. The latter I found too busy even with the vignette.
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The Lensbaby Burnside lens arrived yesterday. This morning it was low-tide, so I took the Burnside and the Velvet 56 to Little Corona del Mar (Newport Beach, CA), to one of my favorite low-tide places in Southern California.
I tested both lenses facing the same subject at all settings; with the burnside it meant using apertures F16 to F2.8, and with each aperture I used all 4 vignette settings. On the Velvet it was just the various apertures I tried.
My observations: my frame contained some cloudy skies, and with F16, F11, F8 and F5.6 the maximum vignette added too much darkness with the Burnside. I liked the maximum vignette with wider apertures, because what was darkened was also blurry (last two images).
F16
F11
F8
F5.6
F4
F2.8

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