We’ve been trying out the Lensbaby* Composer lately: it’s an odd little lens that gives you a moveable area of sharp focus, surrounded by a dreamy halo of blurriness.

After knocking around with it for a few weeks, here’s what we think:

The Good:

• Easier to focus and sharper optics than the original Lensbaby.
• Easier to move the “sweet spot” of focus and get repeatable results.
• Good for photos where you want to draw the eye to one particular detail, like food, product or portrait shots.
• If you decide you don’t want the Lensbaby “look” for a particular shot, you can reduce the effect dramatically by using the narrowest aperture. A friend of ours uses it as his go-to lens because of the sharp optics and light weight.
• Gadgets! Optional, interchangeable optics and wide-angle or telephoto adapters give you lots of different looks from one lens.

The Bad:

• Having to change the apertures manually can slow you down a lot.
• Manual focus makes it harder to capture fast-moving action, and it’s tricky to focus in low light.
• Wider apertures are prone to some pretty serious lens flare.
• The Lensbaby takes some getting used to. It’s a good idea to practice with it for a while before taking it on an important shoot.

The Ugly:

• Sorry, we’re fresh out of ugly.

Conclusion:
If we got stranded on a desert island with only one lens, we might make it this one (with the possible addition of a wide-angle adapter). It’s light, versatile, sharp (when you want it to be) and really fun to use.

The Lensbaby Composer

*Full disclosure: Lensbaby is a Photojojo advertiser, but our love for them is true. (Their first lens was one of the first things we reviewed when we were just starting out almost three years ago.)

p.s. We put our test shots up here in case you guys wanna see ‘em.

Your point & shoot camera has been keeping things from you.

Has it mentioned, for example, that it has a motion sensor for photographing lightning, or that it can shoot in RAW format? We’ll bet it hasn’t even told you that it can shoot at speeds up to 1/25,000th of a second.

Well, if it happens to be a Canon, it can.

The Canon Hacker’s Development Kit (CHDK) is a free download that can expand your camera’s options like strapping a JATO rocket on a Chevy Impala.

CHDK’s been around for a while, but Lifehacker just wrote an article that makes it understandable for mere mortals. What is it? Why do you want it? How do you use it? It’s all there.

Open up communications with your camera. Let the healing begin.

Supercharge Your Point & Shoot

p.s. Free hugs for Twitter friends! Follow Photojojo on Twitter. Recent faves: Photo bombers! Fake infrared photos! & more!

Photo credit: Fir0002

If you’ve admired the lo-fi beauty of your bud’s Holga shots but dread returning to the pre-digital dark ages, we’ve got the answer.

Craig Strong invented the Lensbaby to give his snazzy digital SLR shots an aesthetic similar to a Holga’s. The tiny lens fits most popular camera bodies, and it’s decidedly old-fashioned: no auto-focus, no light-metering on many modern cameras, no zoom, no camera-selectable aperture.

Instead, your $150 buys unadulterated photographic fun–a cool effect reminiscent of a Holga or a tilt-shift lens, but totally unique.

You saved up, read all the reviews, and bought a shiny new digital camera that’s barely as thick as a credit card. It’s awesome.

But what’s the use of your tiny marvel if you need to carry around a hulk of a tripod to take pictures at night? Or to use the self-timer?

Enter ingenius inventors and the magic of plastic.

We recently took a look at two super tiny tripods. One’s about as big as a couple fat markers, with bendable tentacles that grab onto anything. The other’s just twice the size of a bottle cap and turns any soda bottle into a camera stand.

Read Our Mini-Tripod Comparison 
www.photojojo.com