Shooting with a Lensbaby Sol or Trio 28 in Bright Light

Become a better Lensbaby photographer.

I’ve been a Lensbaby shooter since 2005. Two of my favorite Lensbaby products are the Sol 45, and the Trio 28. They both have a fixed aperture of f/3.5.

The Sol 45 is a 45 mm tilt-shift lens. Tilt the lens to shift the focus to the desired part of the frame. The Sol 45 also has bokeh blades that are used to change the look of out-of-focus parts of your image. For micro 4/3rds cameras, Lensbaby makes a Sol 22, which is a 22mm tilt shift lens.

The Trio 28 is my favorite all-in-one Lensbaby. It has a 28mm focal length, with three distinct looks: Sweet (an optic creates a sharp central sweet spot of focus surrounded by gradually increasing blur), Velvet (an optic that has a sharp yet dreamy central area of focus with delicate glow from edge-to-edge), and Twist (a Petzval inspired optic design, gives you a large sharp central area of focus surrounded by twisty, swirling bokeh).

Both lenses are great unless you’re shooting in bright light. Images you try to create in bright light will be overexposed even at your lowest ISO setting. The solution is a neutral density filter. Both lenses have 46mm front filter threads. Use a neutral density filter to reduce the amount of light that reaches the sensor. I use a variable neutral density filter to dial in the desired shutter speed for the image I want to create.

The following image was created with a Sol 45 in bright afternoon sunlight. I used a 46mm variable neutral density filter to reduce the amount of light reaching the sensor, which gave me a properly exposed image.