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March 21, 2005 *— Lensbabies released the Lensbaby 2.0 today at the Wedding & Portrait Photographers International Trade Show in Las Vegas. The new selective focus lens offers a wide aperture rating of f/2.0 and follows the Original Lensbaby, which was released last year. Both lenses bring one area into sharp focus and surround that area with "graduated blur, glowing highlights, and subtle prismatic color distortions," a Lensbabies press release stated.
"In the year since we launched The Original Lensbaby, we learned many photographers wanted to create Lensbaby images that had an even sharper sweet spot," said Craig Strong, the inventor of the lens and CEO of the company. "Lensbaby 2.0’s optic creates a much sweeter sweet spot of focus, which allows photographers to print large photos and see fine details like eye lashes or individual threads of fabric in the sharp area."
Photographers can change the area of focus by bending the flexible tubing around the lens. The new lens adds the f/2.0 aperture rating to the Original Lensbaby’s f/2.8, f/4.0, f/5.6, and f/8.0 settings. It also improves on the original version by adding a "coated, high refractive index, low dispersion optical glass doublet," the company’s press release stated. The company builds the lens on several mounts, so the Lensbaby 2.0 can fit almost all SLR camera bodies — including digital cameras. Lensbaby 2.0 is available immediately at the company’s web site, lensbabies.com, for $150.