The Shitty Camera Challenge: The Lensbaby Muse And A Now-Shitty DSLR

The Shitty Camera Challenge: The Lensbaby Muse And A Now-Shitty DSLR

Note: I started this post in June. I'm only now getting around to doing something about it.

I had this dumb idea a while back. One of my favourite beasties at the moment is the Ilford Pixie 35-II, a basic plastic 35mm camera that produces images with the most amazing radial blur effect. For a while, I've wanted to create a similar effect with a digital camera, and I did have some success with the homemade 'Deakinizer', holding a wide-angle converter reversed over the lens, but this is cumbersome and oftentimes it's quite fiddly to achieve the desired effect. 

My first idea was to get another Pixie, remove the lens housing, and fit this onto a spare Olympus Pen mirrorless digital camera. The Pixie has a helicoid for focusing, and if I took the shutter out, too I could set the camera to aperture priority or manual mode for exposure. I'd have to make a few measurements, but it might work. But it seemed unnecessarily complicated, and I figured there must be a simpler way. In a rare light bulb moment (for me), I thought, what about a Lensbaby? 

For the uninitiated, Lensbaby is a company that produce lenses and lens accessories that create a whole range of in-camera effects, from dreamy Lomography like images to extreme blur. The snag is that Lensbabys are quite expensive, and even getting something second hand on eBay commands a premium. So I did what I always do at times like this, and turned to the Kamerastore website. There were a few Lensbabys available, all for under 100€, for different lens mounts, including a Lensbaby Muse for a Canon EF mount for 30€. Of course it was in the 'Not Passed' category, with 'flaws that will affect typical use'. In this case, it 'only comes with the f5.6 aperture disc and does not include the tool for changing aperture discs'. 

The Lensbaby Muse, like other lenses in the range, works by changing apertures with a series of discs with different sized apertures, from f2.8 to f16 or f22. These are attached to the lens with little magnets and can be removed/changed with a special tool. If the aperture disc is not present, the Muse has a fixed aperture of f2. The Muse weighs less than 100g, and in its 'relaxed' form, the Muse focuses to a distance of about 20cm, bit if you squeeze it so the lens is closer to the camera body, it should focus to infinity.

The Muse is intended for large sensor cameras, and I before I started this quest didn't have a full-frame DSLR. To attach the lens to a micro four-thirds (MFT) camera I have a Canon EOS/EF lens to MFT body adapter. However, the cameras that I have are definitely not Shitty Camera compliant, being greater than the (as I thought) 5MP sensor resolution permitted by the Challenge. 

So, should I get a cheap'n'cheerful old Canon EF mount DSLR tgat I can use with the Lensbaby Muse for the Shitty Camera Challenge? Definitely. I headed back to my favourite sources of weird and wonderful cameras to see what was available. After a while, I came across a Canon EOS 10D DSLR at Cano Ameralo in Porto. The Canon EOS 10D, released in 2003, is a 6.3MP camera that was described as being for 'semi-professional' use. According to the description on the Cano Ameralo website, the 10D is 'built like a tank', and it certainly is a heavy beast, clocking in at 790g excluding the BG-ED3 battery grip that came with it. 

The Canon EOS 10D DSLR features a electronic focal plane shutter with speeds between 30s and 1/4000s (+B). The shutter can take bursts of up to 9 frames at 3fps before the image buffer is filled. Released in 2003, the EOS 10D was the last Canon digital SLR to take EF mount lenses, before EF-S mount became available. The EOS 10D records to Compact Flash (CF) cards. Back when the EOS 10D was released in 2003, it was aimed at the semi-professional market, and retailed for about 1800€. Today, you can pick one up for between 30-50€.

My EOS 10D was fitted with the Canon BG-ED3 battery grip which included a single battery (a second was ordered straight away). What it didn't have was the original battery door, so the grip always has to be fitted. It has also lost the side rubber covering over the USB and video sockets, but that is quite common nowadays. It was sold as an 'outlet' product at Cano Ameralo, which meant it was, 'sold for parts or decoration', but it was described as, 'fully functional ... in good condition with signs of use'.

To begin with, I was disappointed that the EOS 10D was a 6.3MP camera, since it was outside the Shitty compliant resolution for DSLRs. I appealed to the Shitty Camera community for leniency, and was delighted to discover that somewhere along the way, the resolution for Shitty DSLRs had increased to 10MP. Looks like I was in business. I also bought a Canon 35-80mm f4-5.6 EF mount zoom lens to go with the camera, which is functioning well, though it has 'haze behind the front element which will effect image quality '. However, a Google search has shown that it's quite easy to take these apart and if I can remove the front element then I can clear away the haze.

We headed out to Vagueira, for a nice lunch, and stopped in Costa Nova for an aperitivo at one of our favourite beachfront cafés, the Kon-Tiki. What I particularly like about this café is the wooden walkway that stretches the length of the beach and is great for capturing people walking from one bar to another. It was a good test for the Lensbaby, and I set about getting some pictures.  And thee I encountered my first snag: getting focus with the Muse is really difficult. To focus the Muse you squeeze the lens barrel and then can move the lens orientation to get a selectively blurred image. But it's a really slow process to get the focus just right, and trying 'street' photography was probably not the best idea for a first try with this lens.

I've also discovered that perhaps the program mode of this Canon EOS 10D is not working properly, or it just doesn't like not having a fixed aperture size. The images on program mode were horribly blown out, and I ended up leaving the camera on manual and adjusting the shutter speed as needed. After a brief session at Costa Nova, we headed over to Vagueira for lunch. After lunch, I had a brief window to play with the Lensbaby on more static objects, and that was certainly easier. 

I've discovered that the sweet spot for focusing the Lensbaby is about 10m distance from the camera and I think I'm going to need a lot more practise with this combination. In the meantime, and perhaps this is a mistake, I've ordered a 'well used' Lensbaby Composer from the MPB website. The Composer looks quite beat up, but it does include the Aperture kit and I'm hoping that this might help with using the Muse, too.

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