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David Arnold Photography+
Stump in lake

Experimenting with Lens Blur: the Burnside 35mm Lens

Posted on November 12, 2020November 12, 2020

Humans see binocularly, whereas a camera lens records light with only one light source—monocularly establishing a single point of focus. The photographer chooses a single point of focus, giving emphasis and meaning to the image. By adjusting the focus in the image, a photographer can establish a hierarchy of focus and attention over the image. The viewer’s eyes are drawn to certain details and away from others through the use of focus controls on the lens. As Stephen Shore states in Nature of Photographs, “A gravitation of attention to the plane of focus. Attention to focus concentrates our attention.” [1]

Photographic attributes including shutter speeds, depth of field, and focal length control the visual qualities of photographs. Blurring and generating distortions with filters and lens aberrations, and using motion blur effects have been commonly used by photographers since the 19th century. These techniques experiment with seeing photographically and are often oppositional to those qualities delineated by master photographers such as Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Paul Strand, and others. With the rise of precisionist aesthetics in the 1920s, the most cherished works were by photographers who, like Henri Cartier-Bresson, quested for the “decisive moment” and championed this moment as the bearer of truth. Others, as exemplified by Weston and Adams, championed clarity of vision and largely avoided the moving subject. Although blurred and out-of-focus images were accepted as part of the medium, they were typically treated as suspect, as regrettable mistakes.

Stump in alpine lake
Stump, Sardine Lake, Gold Lakes Basin, Plumas National Forest, Sierra Nevada Mountains, California. Lumix SR1 with the Burnside 35mm set to F/2.8 to create the maximum amount of swirling bokeh seen in the trees and water reflections surrounding the stump.

Until recently, the majority of photographers who experimented creatively with lens blur and out-of-focus imagery worked outside of mainstream photography. These photographers believe that visual realities can be felt as well as seen, and are as fascinated by what is left out of the photograph as what is contained within it. They intuitively express their conviction that the medium is not restricted to the sharply-focused details of our everyday world, but that photography can also record indecisive moments. These deliberate attempts to court accidents and the mysteries of extrusive time undermine the authority of transcription photography and posit a restructuring of seeing photographically.

Grass with mountains in background
Grass Stack, Thomas Canyon, The Humboldt–Toiyabe National Forest, Ruby Mountains, Nevada. Moving close to the grass stack increases the out of focus area — the Burnside 35mm lens was set to F/2.8 to achieve the maximum swirl effect.

As seen in photographs of Uta Barth, Bill Armstrong, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and others, postmodern theories of identity, indeterminacy, and circular meanings have given energy to investigations of transient and ambiguous knowledge referenced in blurred photographs. This “distorted seeing” has had a long tradition in photography, though it is underreported and uncommented upon by most standard histories. These techniques are not unique to photography and manifest a type of seeing photographically set down by Moholy-Nagy in 1936 in “Eight Varieties of Photographic Seeing.” [2]

Abandoned car in front of large ranch house.
American Motor’s Eagle, Jiggs, Nevada. The Burnside 35 was set to F/5.6. Four overlapping exposures were merged into a panorama using Adobe Photoshop’s “photomerge” feature. Image sharpness is centered on the Eagle and drops off on the edges where slight bokeh swirling occurs.

Since its launch in 2004 by professional photographer Craig Strong, Lensbaby has become an important addition to experimental photography. Lensbaby lenses were born from many years of experimentation with lens modification as Strong “joined an old Speed Graphic lens with a short Shop-Vac hose to shoot images otherwise impossible with a DSLR lens, which inspired the original Lensbaby lens.” [3] The original Lensbaby was a simple lens attached to a hard, flexible coil joined to the lens mount. The flexible coil pushed from one side to another, allowing the focus to be manipulated. In addition to the original fully flexible lens, Lensbaby has introduced adjustable focus tilt-shift lenses. Like the Holga, the Lensbaby has gained a passionate following.

  • Abandoned car along a creek bed with trees.
  • Abandoned Sedan along a creek bed with trees.

Abandoned Cars, The Humboldt–Toiyabe National Forest, Ruby Mountains, Nevada. The Burnside 35 was set to F/4. Four overlapping exposures were created and then merged into a panorama using Adobe Photoshop’s “photomerge” feature. In the pick-up truck example, a sharp focus is centered on the broken headlamp and dented fender and drops off on the edges to accentuate the Aspen leaves swirling in a strong wind. With the abandoned sedan, a sharp focus is centered on the left side of the windshield and drops off in the trees. In both examples, a strong wind blowing up the canyon accentuated the blur in the fall foliage.

The Lensbaby lenses allow photographers to experiment with selective focus by bringing one area of your photo into sharp focus, with that ‘sweet spot’ surrounded by gradually increasing blur. Each Lensbaby lens is a tutorial in optical principles and each resulting photograph is a unique experimental creative lens design.

Aspen Leaves in the Ruby Mountains, Nevada
Aspen Leaves, Thomas Canyon, The Humboldt–Toiyabe National Forest, Ruby Mountains, Nevada. The Burnside 35mm lens was set to F/4. The swirling and vignetting effects are seen at the edges of the image. A strong wind adds to the swirling effects produced by the Burnside 35mm lens.

Lensbaby’s success has lead to increasingly sophisticated lens designs. Released in 2018, the Burnside 35mm lens is a high-quality Pertzval-inspired lens that creates a swirling bokeh or out of focus area. The F/2.8 Burnside includes a slider to control the image swirl and vignette. The amount of swirl is controlled by the aperture setting, with the most swirl occurring at the F/ 2.8 aperture setting. The Burnside 35mm features an impressive build quality reminiscent of vintage prime lenses from the 1960s.

All photographs in this article were created with the Burnside 35mm lens, with a Sony A-mount. during recent trips into the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Northern California and the Ruby Mountains in Eastern Nevada. The A-mount Burnside lens was attached to the Lumix S1R, an L-mount mirrorless camera, using a Novoflex A-mount to L-mount lens adapter.

Notes:

[1] Stephen Shore, Nature of Photographs, p 53.

[2] László Moholy-Nagy, “A New Instrument of Vision,” Maholy-Nagy, p. 52. See>https://monoskop.org/images/7/79/Moholy-Nagy_Laszlo_1936_1981_From_Pigment_to_Light.pdf

[3] Craig Strong, “Our Story,” Lensbaby, https://lensbaby.com/pages/our-story

David Arnold

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