Review on 📷 Enhance Your Sony NEX Photography with the Lensbaby LB-V56BX Velvet 56" Lens by Danielle Ward

An interesting lens that has some disadvantages compared to the A7II. I'm not a fan of 50mm "normal" lenses. They are too ordinary, too boring and too often produce uninteresting images. There's a reason they've been replaced by clustered zoom lenses. But standard zooms have their problems: they're slow, they lack the sharpness of the old regular lenses, and there are problems with distortion. At every focal length, they fall short or far short of their mainstream replacements. The Velvet 56 is an interesting replacement for a regular full-frame lens. At f1.6, this is close to 1.4 of the old fast film standard. It's manual focus, like old footage. But it's intentionally shaky, which was never the case with old film stock. He asks the question "why be normal?" It is in this field of view, why? Let's eliminate the weaknesses first. The A7II's focus assist just stops opening. This wonderful, "artistic" mush of softness makes the contrast focusing system just throw in the towel. You are alone or under magnification because the small red lines will not help you. And in the dark it's a problem. I lost quite a few shots because I was focusing too far forward, and the shallow depth of field of 1.6 meant the entire bracketing was a total waste. But in the sun it looked different. The lens has a learning curve and will throw that curve at you from time to time. Sometimes this curve turns out to be round. In other cases, this curve creates a completely different picture. Vignetting can be very interesting when managed properly. When it works, it works, it works beautifully. If that doesn't work, it's a soup sandwich. The picture must be thrown away. The lens has a learning curve that doesn't help the A7II's learning curve. It's a lens you'll want to use with the A7II's zoom capability, but Sony doesn't make it the easiest of tasks for a new user. Focus is smooth, if a little long, as it's a one-two macro lens. Another oddity is the huge protrusion of the lens hood. Why the Lensbaby has such an exaggerated metal hood is beyond me. That's too much and adds to a lens that already suffers from weight issues. The processing quality can only be described as solid. It's a heavy animal. It's all metal and you can feel it in the air. Only the bottom lens cap is plastic, which is the only place you can tell the Lensbaby saved money. The aperture ring is nice and positive with noticeable dents. As mentioned, focusing is smooth, if a little tight, but to be expected for macro photography. The only remark is the long overhang of the metal hood. I don't know if I've become "dreamy" yet. At full aperture, mush is obtained, the lens simply does not snap. At medium frequencies you get a very cool vignetting. I haven't tried stopping completely yet. This lens doesn't work well in dark or low light conditions, just not with the A7II. It could be better with the low-light kings A7s and A7s2, capable of sucking in every last photon and putting them to the buccaneers' service. Since it's limited to daylight or well-lit interiors, I'm deducting a star.