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The area outside the circular image should be black if the lens was perfect, but, inevitably, some reflections leave information in that area and, once the image has been edited, the border is unpredictable, and there is the option to cover that area with a solid colour.

Both of the Lensbabies are true fisheye lenses and give a circular image. This might seem to limit their usefulness, but some subjects lend themselves to such an image.

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The Laowa 15mm is a Macro lens that focuses extremely closely but still maintains a great depth of field so, enabling environmental macro images.

I met Craig Strong at a Photography Show in 2017, and in 2019, at the same Photography show, I was invited to be one of the staff on the Lensbaby stand. I have a fairly extensive collection of Lensbabies, from one of the first hand-built ones to the latest Spark 2.

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I started taking photographs with an old Zenit B and a Helios 44 lens that belonged to a friend in about 1972. When I went to University, my parents bought me a Practica LLC (which I hated!). I started B&W developing and printing because I was a photographer for the student paper, and it was cheap. I studied engineering, and photography was a hobby, developing and printing in the bathrooms of various houses until I eventually returned to University and became a lecturer, first in Mathematics and, later, in the Art School, teaching Sound engineering, Cinematography, and Photography.

Andrea Toulouse, Simon Thiele, Harald Giessen, Alois M. Herkommer, "Super-fine inkjet process for alignment-free integration of non-transparent structures into 3D-printed micro-optics," Proc. SPIE 10930, Advanced Fabrication Technologies for Micro/Nano Optics and Photonics XII, 109300W (4 March 2019). https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2513520

Lensbaby came into my life in 2014 when I was looking for a way to get similar effects to freelensing without the damage to the cameras that it caused. I retired in 2018 and moved to France, where I spent a lot of time doing photography and woodwork. We are doing some house renovations, and I built my first real darkroom in the old barn where I have two enlargers and the ability to investigate old processes like Cyanotype and alternative processes like Caffenol. I now use mainly Nikon cameras.

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They all have a large depth of field and close focus ability typical of wide-angle lenses. This Blog is mainly concerned with the two Lensbaby lenses, both of which project a circular image.

Sophisticated 3D printing technologies offer a high level of design flexibility and a high resolution in printing. Therefore, the printing of optical elements is an advantageous alternative to conventional production procedures.

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With this procedure 3D-printed optical elements can be functionalized. By filling microcavities after printing, components such as diaphragms, color filters or achromatic lenses can be directly integrated into the design of the optical components. If a ferrofluid is used as a filling, multi-lensed zoom or focusing systems can also be realized.

There are obvious subjects that lend themselves to a fisheye lens. Centering a round object like the swing above in the viewfinder easily fits the lens and gives an interesting viewpoint. However, taking a round object, for example, the London Eye, and rather than centering it use the distortion of the lens to emphasize the shape echoing it in the circular edge of the image and in the other elements of the image which are distorted to the shape of the edge.

The fisheye lens can emphasize circular shapes distorting rectangular shapes, emphasizing their original shape. It also provides a circular window on a scene, extracts an element from a scene, leaving the surroundings to shrink away from prominence, or provides a different perspective. As with many unusual lenses, it takes practice and imagination, and as might be obvious here, it can be overused.

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Printed optical elements with functional areas such as diaphragms and structures for scattered light absorption can now be simply and inexpensively produced by using microfluidic structures. These structures are integrated into the print layout of the optical components and are formed during the 3D print. If a ferrofluid is used in the process, controlled forces can be exerted using a magnetic field, thus realizing active systems.

As part of a project sponsored by Baden-Württemberg Stiftung gGmbH, scientists at the University of Stuttgart have now developed a new procedure. Functional areas, such as diaphragms and structures for absorbing scattered light, can now simply and precisely be integrated in complex printed 3D optical systems. For this purpose, the micro-optical element is already provided with the smallest of hollow spaces (micro cavities) during printing. These cavities later serve to intake functional substances. The small size of the hollow spaces mean that capillary forces carry out the distribution of liquid in the hollow spaces. The functional liquid is then dried or hardened. Properties such as the absorption, reflection or scatter properties of the functional areas are precisely defined through the choice of the substance, i.e. the nano particles it contains. If the hollow spaces are filled with a ferrofluid, the physical properties can be additionally changed by a magnetic field. In this way, multi-lensed zoom or focusing systems are possible which can for example be directly printed onto an image-conductive fiber.

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I am fond of extremely wide-angle lenses; my first Fisheye was an Olympus 16mm f/3.5. At the same time, I had a Vivitar 17mm f/3.5 that had corrected spherical distortion. Both of these went when I got rid of all my Olympus gear in about 2003.

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The 3D printing of optical elements has increasingly gained importance in recent years, as it is often more flexible and inexpensive than conventional micro molding processes. 3D printers that can produce complex optical systems are available on the market. Until now, however, one weakness has been that the component to be printed has to be completely transparent in the near infrared range, in particular in the stereo-lithographic procedure. Therefore, no absorbing areas can be printed into the optical system. In addition, the printed components have been rigid until now and could not be made tunable, for example by external actuation.

The Sigma 12mm is a strange lens that has a 180° diagonal field of view. The same lens was sold by several companies and had a T2 mount allowing it to be easily adapted to a wide variety of cameras. It has three f-stop settings, f/8, 11, and 16, set by rotating a disk with three holes cut in it. The wide field of view lends itself to 360° panoramas, especially small world projections.

A. Toulouse, S. Thiele, H. Giessen, and A. Herkommer, "Alignment-free integration of apertures and nontransparent hulls into 3D-printed micro-optics," Opt. Lett.  43, 5283-5286 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.43.005283