I read about this interesting technique the other day on Swiss Miss called Freelensing. Essentially you take the lens off your camera and tilt it. Its sort of like the concept behind the lens baby. You don’t take it all the way off, just tilt it to one side. If you tilt it left the right hand side is in focus, tilt it right and the left is. Its fiddly because you’re trying to nail the focus at f/1.8 while not dropping your lens. It also means that you have to get closer to your subject, so you need to get real close with the 50mm.
The results can be nice though. I had a quick play in the pub last night and most of the photos were rubbish, but you could see a sort of tilt shift like effect to them. You can also get some interesting flare.
Is it of any real use? I dunno. Is a lens baby? I suppose if you want to play around with a lens baby like effect without splashing out on one then it’ll save you a bit. Of course its going to be a lot easier using a Lens Baby as it’ll actually stay on the camera. Probably not the best technique to try on your next beach shoot though, unless you want your sensor to be sandblasted.
