At the Lensbaby stand, we got our hands on the new Tilt Transformer and the Composer with Tilt Transformer. The Lensbaby Tilt Transformer is a special tilt adapter that allows Nikon F mount lenses to be attached to a Micro Four Thirds camera, and transforms them into manual-focus tilt lenses with selective focus capabilities. The kit used to demonstrate this at the booth included a Panasonic G1 and a Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens. Since this lens has a much larger imaging circle than normally required to cover a Four Thirds sensor, and since the Lensbaby Tilt Transformer allows a much greater degree of tilt than a typical tilt lens, you can achieve pretty dramatic results with this combo; with a potentially very thin slice of focus stretching for example from the lower left to the upper right corner, with everything else being completely blurred.

Nikon F lenses aren’t the only optics that can be used with the Tilt Transformer. Lensbaby itself offers a kit called the Composer with Tilt Transformer, which offers everything the Tilt Transformer does, but also includes a Lensbaby Composer with a Double Glass Optic for when you need to work with a sweet spot rather than a thin plane of focus. The Composer with Tilt Transformer is also compatible with the rest of the Optic Swap System, with the exception of the Fisheye Optic. The last picture in the small image gallery below shows the Composer with Tilt Transformer mounted to a Panasonic G1 camera.

Image Gallery

Click on a thumbnail to see the full version.

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