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Swirly bokeh: Lensbaby announces Twist 60 lens

Published Apr 12, 2016 | Wenmei Hill

Lensbaby has announced the Twist 60, a new lens for creative photography. From what we can see, the Twist 60 is all about bokeh. The 12 aperture blades and a maximum aperture of F2.5 should give a soft, well-rounded bokeh with good separation of the subject from the background, but the real 'twist' is just that - the twist. Specifically the twisty, swirly bokeh. Lensbaby claims the lens is modeled after Joseph Petzval's Classic 19th-century design, giving photographers the ability to introduce and control that distinctive circular bokeh that is unique to Petzval-type lenses.

We are interested to see how this lens performs, as it is almost half the price of similar lenses recently announced and it is available (via the Lensbaby Optic Swap System) in a wide variety of mounts.

The Twist 60 is available for pre-order starting April 12, 2016 and is currently offered in Canon, Nikon, and Sony E mounts. It is priced at $279.95/£196 for the full lens or $179.95/£126 for the Twist 60 Optic (for use with other Lensbaby Optic Swap System lenses).

Press release:

Lensbaby's New Twist 60 Lens Exudes Pure Magic of Vintage Photography

Company’s love of old lenses inspires new creativity with classic image elements optimized for full frame photographers

Portland, OR – April 12th, 2016 – Lensbaby, makers of award-winning creative effects lenses, optics and accessories, today announced the availability of the Twist 60 lens. Twist 60 helps creative photographers find their visual voice by seeing the world differently.

This metal-bodied 60mm f/2.5 lens with gold anodized accents creates powerful portraits, spotlighting subjects by freeing them from their background and surrounding them with swirly blur and enhanced vignette. The brighter the aperture, the greater the swirl and the greater the vignette.

“Twist 60 embodies our love of old lenses and their unique ways of helping photographers discover creative possibilities,” said Craig Strong, Lensbaby Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer. “True to an 1840 design by Joseph Petzval, this lens reveals striking separation between subjects and their background, a quality that modern lens designs lack.”

Twist 60 Lens specs:
● 12 blade f/2.5-22 aperture
● 60mm focal length
● Twisty, swirly blur
● Recommended for use on full frame cameras
● Available in Canon EF, Nikon F, and Sony E mounts
● 4 elements in 3 groups
● Filter threads: 46mm
● Black anodized body with gold anodized aperture ring
● Minimum focus distance - 18”

Availability
Twist 60 lens retails for $279.95 and is available via pre-order beginning April 12, 2016 (shipping May 5th, 2016). Twist 60 Optic will also be sold separately for use with other Lensbaby Optic Swap System-compatible lenses. It retails for $179.95. For best results, when using it in a tilting Lensbaby such as the Composer Pro, photographers should shoot with Twist 60 pointed straight ahead. Lensbaby products are available at lensbaby.com, B&H, Adorama, and from select specialty photo stores worldwide.

About Lensbaby
For over a decade, photographers have relied on Portland, Oregon based Lensbaby to help them break free of routine, tinker, and open themselves up to unexpected results – dancing, playing and delighting in what’s possible with a creative lens and their imagination.

Lensbaby makes award-winning creative effects lenses, optics and accessories that follow this philosophy, including the Velvet 56, a versatile portrait and macro lens; their unique Optic Swap System, which lets photographers swap their optic and tilt their lens for limitless effects; and mobile lenses that transform everyday smartphone photography. Lensbaby products are sold and distributed worldwide. For more information, visit www.lensbaby.com

Lensbaby Twist 60 specifications

Tags: lens-news, lensbaby, lenses

Gear in this story

Lensbaby Twist 60 for Canon EF●	$279.95
Lensbaby Twist 60 for Nikon F●	$279.95
Lensbaby Twist 60 for Sony E●	$279.95
Lensbaby Twist 60 Optic●	$179.95

Show all listings (4) ...

Comments

Total comments: 108

I kind of like the look of it enough to would like to play with, but unfortunately not enough to pay the asking price. But looking at the comments it seems I should be able to replicate this with older lens. Can anyone suggest which I could look into for achieve the same effect on a Nikon D7200?

0 upvotes

A Helios 44-2 (with appropriate adapter) shot wide open can yield very similar results.

0 upvotes

Hey, if Lomography can sell big pseudo-old-style lenses, Lensbaby can make a modern lens allowing you to play with the same effects for less. Good for Lensbaby. Can you do this cheaper with certain old lenses? Yeah, pretty much. So what? Lensbaby has 'em new and you get to play all their freestyle tilty/shifty games with it too.

That said, do I want one? Nope. :-)

1 upvote

I'm sure you'll know the answer to this: can't you simulate this effect by just cutting out a cardboard cutout of a smaller aperture and stick it behind (in front?) of the lens to cause optical vignetting that in turn causes swirly bokeh?

0 upvotes

No, the swirly effect is because of the optical design. modern lenses are corrected for thus, you can't achieve this by creating more vignetting

0 upvotes

Rishi: swirly bokeh are a combination of defects, mostly internal vignetting, but also field curvature, etc. That said, it isn't particularly difficult to replicate a good approximation to the effect. Lensbaby adds the tilty/shifty stuff to that, which is harder to fake. Anyway, I really don't care in that I've never found that look attractive and if I want it in a new lens, my $25 Fujian 35mm f/1.7 has plenty of the look (for an APS-C sensor).

0 upvotes

A really inexpensive way to experiment with swirly bokeh is the Russian Helios 44-2 or variant legacy manual focus lens. They were made in vast quantities and a copy can be found on eBay for very little dollars. Best used on FF camera.

2 upvotes

100% in agreement here. I saw the results above and thought "this looks familiar!" - lo and behold, I was doing exactly this with £20 worth of second-hand cold-war era lens about 8 years ago xD

1 upvote

Wow !! just like my 2 dollars app from google store !

0 upvotes

I have some c-mount lenses (adapted to m43) that do exactly this. paid less than $40 for. sharp in the center, soft and twisty on the edges, like this.

1 upvote

This kind of bokeh gives me a headache...

1 upvote

Looks like a chinese or korean clone of isco / schneider cinelux projection lens stuck in a helicoid

Edited 24 seconds after posting

0 upvotes

Wow,
I might have to get one of these. The "swirly" bokeh looks exactly the same as what you get with the Zeiss Batis 85mm f1.8 :)

1 upvote

I get almost exactly the same effect from a no-name CCTV lens that cost me about 25$. So, yeah, thanks but no thanks.

3 upvotes

I hope it comes with dramamine.

1 upvote

Why all the hate? This lens looks really exciting to me.

2 upvotes

Because you can do the same thing for way cheaper with a number of existing lenses :)

0 upvotes

The sh.tt.er the image you get from lens, the more expensive it gets.
"Hey, we take your state of the art camera and destroy your images so badly that'll make you want to waste your hard-earned money".
But some like the effect, eh?

2 upvotes

Lens. Of. The. Year!

1 upvote

OMG, I'm going to get one of these

if I see it on sale for 99 cents.

3 upvotes

I'll see your 99 cents and lower you to 49.

0 upvotes

I find photographing through the bottom of a jam jar is somewhat cheaper.

Brian

6 upvotes

Aww, poor nerds. Nothing sends them into a rage like imperfection.

Edited 9 minutes after posting

13 upvotes

Kind of nice. You can get swirly lenses on ebay, in particular Russian ones. But, the good ones are actually quite expensive. At least as expensive as the Lens Baby.

My main objection against Lens Baby stuff is that it looks cheap and ugly. Maybe irrelevant, but it disturbs me that they deliberately make i look like cr@p. They look like some kind of toys. Its a part of their image (sic!).

Edited 1 minute after posting

0 upvotes

This one goes in my bag.

0 upvotes

I don't understand who would buy such a lens and produce an effect that can't be removed. Basically if u don't want it, you are stuck with it.. In photoshop you can do the same and have control over the effect.
All of the lens baby line is the same. Photoshop can emulate all of their effects with a lot more precision and control.

4 upvotes

yet some prefer not spend even more time on the computer but have no problem with real life, taking hard, unreversable decisions even in photography.

this being the kryptonite for most art-directors and other folks that depend on so called creativity after the fact.

mind: i dont have anything against digital artists, but that's not photography. it's painting based on images..

14 upvotes

Bokeh effects are not all that easy to replicate in Photoshop. Much easier to have the actual lens. And much faster.

4 upvotes

Smack easy to replicate, quick and a greater degree of control. There are plugins that specialise in bokeh etc

2 upvotes

Currently, it is just impossible for a software plugin to produce a bokeh identical to a lens bokeh. Just because the bokeh "intensity" depends on the distance and the software has no knowlegde of the distance of each object or region in the picture. The bokeh plugin can just roughly mimic what a lens does. In other words, a "true" bokeh could only be applied in software on a picture with depth information for every pixel.

5 upvotes

You can create real bokeh with any fast lens. then apply a motion blur, or spiral blur in this case, and create the same exact thing this lens does with complete control and versatility.

0 upvotes

GRUBERND Photography as it is is not REAL. It's just an artistic representation of reality. For example, Bokeh is produced by glass, the human eye can't see it. Flash photography is not a representation of reality either. Limited dynamic range on cameras rely on external light sources to compensate of the lack of DR that a human eye can see. So, if u think about it. People have been Faking reality for a couple of centuries now. So Photoshop is just another tool to create art. Like a Flash or a fast lens with an "artistic" bokeh or not to mention B&W photos. Doesn't get any more unreal than that.
Some photographers still can't use Photoshop. And the ones that use it too much get criticized by the "purists". Who cares how you get the photo done. It's just art and it's to be admired. The end result justifies the means.

0 upvotes

No - you cannot first create bokeh and then spiralise it in software. Even that needs you to know the distance to each pixel.

You can, of course, make something you like. But the real thing you cannot do.

Its like soft focus lenses. The soft focus lens software solutions might create something nice. But, it is not soft focus.

Edited 1 minute after posting

4 upvotes

@clicstudio:

'I don't understand who would buy such a lens and produce an effect that can't be removed.'

Those who know what they are doing and know they won't be removing the effect..

'Basically if u don't want it, you are stuck with it..'

No.. it's more like, If you don't want it, don't press the shutter button.

'In photoshop you can do the same and have control over the effect.'

The same <-- that's a pipedream..

'All of the lens baby line is the same. Photoshop can emulate all of their effects with a lot more precision and control.'

Why buy a 1DX when you can do the same thing with an iphone and a pair of binoculars?

1 upvote

Roland I meant u can use a regular fast lens that does bikes and then apply spiral effect in photoshop. Still, there are a lot of plug-ins that emulate focus and bokeh. Here is one. https://www.topazlabs.com/lenseffects

0 upvotes

@clicstudio. little missunderstanding here.

RealLife != Reality

the latter is always subject to personal interpretation. but Real Life is something that happens in RealTime™, a string of events also know as moments.

and there comes the choice: spend those moments out there doing something or spend them in front of a computer doing something else, maybe even trying to recreate the things out there.

neither is better in a measurable objective way, but one is a number of steps more Meta to Reality than the other.

0 upvotes

I think I finally understand how this works.

If a lens really does a bad job at anything..... flare, blur, aberrations, etc... then it becomes a highly desirable "creative tool." And someone will prize it for these characteristics.

And if the original bad lens can be had on ebay for $20, then someone will come along and create a new version of it for $300.

I give Lensbaby a lot of credit for finding this product niche, and milking it for everything it is worth. Seriously, this is capitalism at its finest.

13 upvotes

+1 for "And if the original bad lens can be had on ebay for $20, then someone will come along and create a new version of it for $300.".

3 upvotes

A good swirly bokeh lens on eBay for $20? You can get the cheapest Helios 44-2 for $30. But, I assume you have to pay twice to get a decent one.

The Lens Baby costs $180 and comes in a native mount.

The Helios is an M42. You will need an adapter for Canon. On Nikon, M42 lenses do not work so well.

4 upvotes

Marty I mostly agree with you but I don't think the swirly bokeh of the asymmetrical double-Gauss lenses (Biogon) is a bad job. It is weird and it gets used not that often but it is not a bad job...unlike this lens for 300.

It may be creative for framing heads with a swirly frame of background vegetation for example when working portraiture.

Edited 2 times; latest 2 minutes since posting

1 upvote

Helios 44-2 doesn't produce the swirl bokeh. Helios 40 or 40-2 does, but it is much more expensive.

0 upvotes

@puffaz All heios 44, 77 and 40 produce the same amount of swirl compared to their fl. So the 77 has the least, 44 is in the middle and 40 has a bit stronger swirl than 44. As I said the difference is due to the shallow dof of a 85mm lens.
Optically the lens schemes are all identical and they ALL DO produce swirl.

3 upvotes

I love when people tell you you're wrong about equipment you already own. This website attracts whack jobs like no other.

2 upvotes

@JackM
This is a mild case.
Every time I try to provide some useful info some guys with fixed thinking come up and "give me a good lesson". I am considering leaving at all just to skip the negativity that people often get here just for sharing info.

Edited 41 seconds after posting

3 upvotes

Yes, they all do.

1 upvote

To me it looks like Lensbaby has simply copied Lomo on this one, minus the Lomo exchangeable aperture plates.
I wonder why, when there are hundreds of vintage lens designs, they had to copy Lomo.

0 upvotes

Marty, exactly! that's what a good (photography) teacher will tell you:
if you can not avoid a flaw, make it work for you.

or as the Mythbusters put it:
if it's worth doing, it is worth overdoing.

0 upvotes

I wouldn't get it until a client insisted on it.

2 upvotes

Or you can get an old used Helios 44-2, which is actually 58mm f/2.0. Swirly bokeh.

Edited 9 seconds after posting

4 upvotes

Helios 44-2 doesn't produce the swirl bokeh. Helios 40 or 40-2 does, but it is much more expensive.

0 upvotes

I have one. It swirls.

1 upvote

Seconding JackM. I owned one for years and it swirls just fine, thanks.

1 upvote

Would you like a cone with that swirl?

0 upvotes

Dipped and sprinkled

0 upvotes

Actually, this is a price point that might make it interesting. Wouldn't the intensity of the swirl be diminished by stopping down? I'd like to see the bokeh difference between FF and APS-C bodies.

1 upvote

I have to say that like a lot of folks here, this lens isn't on any kind of want list... Still, I don't doubt that in the right hands it could be capable of producing an effect that I'd like. I can't help thinking though that if I were into something like this that I could probably rig up something that would work pretty similarly for a fraction of the price.

2 upvotes

If you shoot Micro 4/3 you can just buy a C-mount 25mm f/1.4 lens for $15, and an adapter plate for $7 (from China). You get that same swirly background blur that you get with this lens for a fraction of the price.

9 upvotes

You get a shallower DoF and a neat vignette thrown in too!

You can also use the dramatic field curvature to do cool stuff like having both a foreground (left/right third) and background (centre) element of the image in focus.

0 upvotes

the megapixel killer

0 upvotes

"... it is almost half the price of similar lenses recently announced..."

Is DPR scared to call Lomography out on their BS?

2 upvotes

It's called class, not fear.

9 upvotes

Appreciate the response. I'm aware of what class is (but thanks for assuming that I don't), and this doesn't fall under that definition. Again, I appreciate the non-contributing, unconstructive response though.

Edited 59 seconds after posting

2 upvotes

I liked your first comment, the second one ruined it.

2 upvotes

The dog picture made me feel like I had just just fallen off one of those playground roundabouts - which some older kid had started to turn really fast! So yep - the effect is a bit stomach-churning. Wonder if you can control the extent of swirl.

Edited 30 seconds after posting

4 upvotes

Same here. I have liked swirly bokeh photos from vintage lenses, but these are too much for my brain and stomach to cope with...

1 upvote

Shoot it on a smaller sensor.
My Helios 44-2's don't really swirl on APS-C either..

0 upvotes

Helios 44-2 doesn't swirl even on FF. Helios 40 or 40-2 swirls on FF, but it is much more expensive. On APC-C the whole swirl effect is out of frame.

0 upvotes

Maybe you got the wrong lens then?
I have three copies of the Helios 44(-2) and they all swirl like crazy.

1 upvote

Sometimes a bad lens is just a bad lens.

10 upvotes

Words to live by.

1 upvote

although a one trick-pony, i commend lens baby for offering it.

2 upvotes

Been enjoying my Helioz 44 2/58 copies for quite a while. ;)

1 upvote

What's the copy of the Helios called if I may ask?
Fwiw, the Helios 44-2 is a copy of the Zeiss Biotar 58/2

0 upvotes

What you said regarding Zeiss Biotar is a well-known fact, nothing new. I use copies of various Helios models: 44-2, 44M-7... By "copy", I meant a certain "sample" that I actually have, equivalent to a unique "serial number," and not in the sense that you used in your second sentence above.

1 upvote

The swirly effect is more obvious on helios 40 actually. The 85mm f1.5. A truely unique and quality lens especially if you get the silver older version. I really enjoy mine helios 40, superb build and optical quality bloes any lensbaby away which is just full of marketing smell

0 upvotes

aah, I see..
yeah, they kinda built new lenses with every turn of the serial numbers..
changed the coatings all the times, different factories are said to have varying quality control, etc.

Well, I have three different ones from three different factories and with different coatings, mounts, etc.
https://mbphotox.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/helios-shootout/

0 upvotes

The Helios charm is in the quirky variations and imperfections...

0 upvotes

Only the girl one is acceptable and that's because my brain shuts out all the Christmas lights. The others are just headache inducing and horror-film like.

7 upvotes

Same thing for me, the plant gave me a headache as soon as I viewed it.

2 upvotes

Both of you and all those who claim insta-headaches when watching a picture need to go to a neurologist right away; there's something wrong with you guys.
Either that or you're repeating the same tired joke people make every time we see swilry bokeh.

0 upvotes

Damn, another creative choice that I don't have to buy, I think I'll criticise it endlessly for a while....

33 upvotes

Or you can thank the manufacturer as some have done, as if they did this as a favor, instead of a way to make money.

0 upvotes

I'm sure they'd be interested in your business plan in which the company thrives by selling stuff for nothing, I'm certain many people would be, count me in.

1 upvote

Makes me think of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToG3Q9e7zWE

0 upvotes

I've had two Lensbaby lenses and I never got the images I wanted. So, I made my own lenses out of magnifying lenses and got it. Total cost per lens was around $15.

1 upvote

(in a stoned voice) Wow man, swirly bokeh.

6 upvotes

Wow man, Dave got a swirly!

0 upvotes

10 seconds in photoshop.

1 upvote

Nope. You can't do this in Photoshop. This is bokeh. It's based on distance to lens. The subject isn't (or shouldn't be) swirled, even if towards the edges of the image. The background is blurred, even if in the center. To do this in post, you'd need a lightfield camera.

Making a lens like this is a good idea, it's just that this has way too much swirl.

14 upvotes

Well you could just shoot with a normal lens then mask out the main subject and just take the whole bokeh part of the normal image and twist it (in sure there are dozens of ways to accomplish this in Photoshop) it probably wouldn't be too hard to replicate this look for those who know photoshop well.

2 upvotes

The effect probably woundn't look exactly like what this lens is able to do... though the difference might be subtle enough that no one would be likely to notice...

3 upvotes

Photoshopped wide aperture looks very artificial compared to the real thing.

1 upvote

Have not seen any photoshopped images that looks like the real thing. It is very complex to get it right.

3 upvotes

@Alphoid nobody suggested using photoshop to create shallow dof. What was suggested was shooting with a fast lens that produces a non swirly bokeh and then using photoshop to swirl that bokeh.

1 upvote

Would someone post a link where the swirl is recreated in Photoshop please? Even more so if it takes seconds to do? Let's see if you have something more than misleading statements.

3 upvotes

And note - it is NOT swirl - it only looks thus. In practice it is elliptic bokeh where the smallest width of the ellipse is radial. And - this cannot be created by doing any morphing of the image. It has to be analyzed and rendered, i.e. quite advanced programming.

2 upvotes

@Roland Karlsson

Of course it can't be reproduced in post. I really enjoy the authoritative statements so typical for more and more people in the world.

Rolland I don't have your technical knowledge by far but I definitely agree just from my perception and long experience with these lenses. Thanks for the details!

From what I see it is more about very specific deformations in progressively varying amount. many factors seem to contribute to the level of the effect. The distance from the centre of the frame and the distance to the lens seem to be the ones with greatest sensitivity.

Even if the elliptical deformations could be reproduced it would take a heavy and complicated algorithm, lots of trial and still I am sure the result will be noticeably artificial.

Edited 2 minutes after posting

0 upvotes

@Yanko Kitanov
Does it matter that you couldn't reproduce it exactly? You could create an effect that looked similar. That would be close enough for those that don't want to buy a lens like this. I doubt ANYBODY cares about the difference between it being elliptical and swirl.

I personally would just buy the darned lens. I don't have the time or patience for photoshop.

1 upvote

Waaay too much swirl. I have a couple of FSU lenses, and I'm not even sure I like the small swirl I'm getting. Like most things, it's best in moderation.

3 upvotes

My old Minolta 70-210mm lens gives a slight amount of swirl to the bokeh, and it's a beautiful effect. I was excited when I saw the headline. When I saw the photos, I felt like puking. The boy looked almost okay.

This is way too much swirl.

2 upvotes

Interesting... For those who don't have the resources a Helios 44-M-7 will be a bit less swirly but optically better alternative for $40-60.

Edited 2 times; latest 1 minute since posting

9 upvotes

Helios are always so pricey on ebay

0 upvotes

Exactly - I quoted the ebay prices from today but I bought mine for some $15 with a Zenit camera both as new. I was visiting Russia and a local guy was happy to get rid of it :)

P.S. The Helios 77-M-4 is a 50mm f/1.8 and does share the same price and swirly character of it's longer bro - the mentioned above 44M 58mm f/2.0.

Edited 4 times; latest 2 minutes since posting

2 upvotes

Have a Helios 44 for my Pentax. Swirl effect got old very quickly. Paid about 50USD, including s&h, maybe less, for a like new lens three years ago. I don't think you should spend more on what is essentially a novelty item.

0 upvotes

there are instructions online to mod helios to give strong swirly bokeh

0 upvotes

The M39 Leitz Summitar 5cm f/2.0 has stronger swirl than the Helios lenses but it is a more expensive lens of course.

1 upvote

Messy.

2 upvotes

aaand now I have a headache

20 upvotes

Total comments: 108

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