First try with a lensball

When thinking about articles for this site, I'm really keen to make sure its a site full of helpful hints tips and stories that will encourage you (the reader) to explore more with your photography, so its important to make sure the projects are accessible to all. This project shows what can be achieved with a little imagination and a little perseverance.

I had the opportunity to borrow Terry’s Lensball for a few days

This project is from a friend who's photography is really developing (excuse the pun) and so I asked if it would be ok to share some of her photographs and her story while creating this lovely image.

Thinking about ideas for my Christmas list and my thoughts wandered to a Lensball after seeing Terry's pictures.  Luckily, I had the opportunity to borrow Terry’s Lensball for a few days.

Due to the on-going Covid pandemic, my family was in the middle of a two-week period of self-isolation so I was stuck indoors which limited what I could try.  I really wanted to take a nice photo of some colourful flowers captured in the Lensball, but as shopping was out of the question, it was a case of making do with what I could find in the house.

Thought was that I would be best placing the lens ball in front of my patio window

My first thought was that I would be best placing the lens ball in front of my patio window to get as much light as possible. I first tried a few pictures using a miniature house (one of my Liliput Lane houses) captured in the lens ball.  It took a bit of messing around to find a way of mounting the ball and the house.

Unfortunately I quickly realised this wasn’t going to work – the patio door has a big join in the middle and we have a large parasol on the patio which could both be seen in the background.

Due to the window being behind by ornament, I wasn't getting much (any!) natural light to highlight the small details on the house.  As a result, the image was very dark and lacking in detail.

Plan-B was to have the plain dining room wall in the background

So Plan-B was to have the plain dining room wall in the background, so that any light from outside would fall on the front of the house.  However, I needed to remove all clutter from the background (including things not directly behind the lensball) as they were causing distracting reflections.

I also needed to cover my dining room table with a neutral tablecloth make the house stand out more.

I found that a slightly over exposed picture produced a cleaner / brighter image.

The best way of getting the image in the Lensball perfectly in focus was to switch the display to the screen on the back of my camera

I found that the best way of getting the image in the Lensball perfectly in focus was to switch the display to the screen on the back of my camera, to zoom in on the part of the house I wanted perfectly focussed and use manual focus.

The camera was mounted on a tripod, and I used a remote to trigger the shot as I was getting some camera shake when using the manual trigger.

I wanted to capture a photo of an object that was really clear in the Lensball, but with the object itself blurred in the background – which I couldn’t find a way of doing with the house.

A few autumn leaves from the back garden

Finding something that I could use for this seemed to create a bit of a challenge, but decided that a few autumn leaves from the back garden might do the trick.  Now, the challenge was on placing the leaves to get the effect I wanted.

I really liked the colour of the leaf in the lens, but it took quite a bit of fiddling to be able to see the blurred leaves in the background.  I'm not sure if I found this difficult because I wasn't using the best lens for this project, a wide angle lens bought for a trip to Iceland.

My final shot was taken with the following settings: 1/25 sec at f3.5, ISO 400

First try with a lensball