Lensbaby Velvet 56mm F1.6...let's go walkabout.

There was a record booth on Central Pier that had boxes full of old pub and club 45's, we're talking late 60's early 70's here youngsters, middles punched out so you had to get those odd plastic triskel shaped inserts so they'd play on the old Fidelity mono deck, Now there were those that I'd play all the time but soon tire of, Pop music..meh... then there were those that took a bit of listening to but became a bit more of a favourite, almost as though the hard work of getting into it gave greater rewards...and so we come to the Lensbaby 56mm f1.6...
Stuck it onto the D750 and thought...'WTF have I done' well it was a good..no great deal from Digixo 
lovely chunk of metal, totally manual, blurry as a night on the Glenfarclas but tightens up the more aperture you dial into it. But my boats weren't floating, couldn't hear 76 trombones and I was rubbing my chin whilst simultaneously cocking an eyebrow...so let's scroll forward and I'm taking the D750 out with the 'baby velvet locked and loaded, no camera bag, nothing to distract or even rescue me from the tremors of a duff shoot and do you know what ..technique, understanding and image making all started to come together. There's no electronic connection between lens and body so you start to dial the aperture in and you see how the blur dials out , no aperture preview button required and for me the sweet spot occurred at F2.8. The focussing is all manual as well and it's an elbow cocking crank to get it all the way around, but I set things at 8' and moved in and out to get the focus point where I needed it, most of the images I took were quite close but not close enough to use the 1:2 macro capabilities at about 5".... So here you have a lens that gives dreamy fall off at wide apertures, tightens up like  normal lens at apertures over F11 and has 1:2 macro capabilities...I'm getting to like it... oh first record I bought from Central Pier record booth with the middle missing   Who do you love by Juicy Lucy  here are some snaps....