Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re shopping for a new lens of some sort, you’ve come to just the right place. Here’s ThePhoblographer’s list of the best lenses you can get your hands on without breaking the bank. More »

Lensbaby’s new bag is like an oversized egg-box for your precious light-bending optics. The long padded stick has movable sections inside to hold up to four lenses, and there is a mesh section for small accessories, an external zippered pocket for other extras, and the ends themselves open with flaps for quick access to an oft-used lens. Finally, you can attach a shoulder-strap and stack multiple bags using interlocking Velcro straps.

For just $40, Lensbaby owners will probably snap this up. I have a few of the focus-distorting lenses and they tend to rattle around in a bigger bag, and it seems like overkill to actually lug a proper camera-bag just to carry these and a camera body. The bag also makes swapping out the changeable optics a little easier, as you don’t have to juggle their little plastic containers, too (pro tip: don’t forget at least one of these containers’ lids. It is also a removal-tool).

What I like best is that it is slimline, and comes with a strap included but not attached. Perfect for tossing inside a stealth camera-bag.

Available now.

Lensbaby System Bag product page [Lensbaby]

See Also:

• Lensbaby Tilt Transformer Marries Nikon Lenses to Micro Four …
• Hands-On With Lensbaby Fisheye and Soft-Focus Optics
• Scout: The Lensbaby That Doesn't Bend
• Lensbaby Control Freak Puts You in Charge

Hey, Panasonic, take a look over here. This is how you upgrade a successful, well designed camera. You add almost no changes, boosting the maximum ISO from 3200 to 6400, for example, and perhaps tweaking the color and shaving some weight to make it look a little different from its predecessor. What you don’t do is take possibly the best camera you ever made (GF1) and dumb it down until it is little more than a point-and-shoot with interchangeable lenses (GF2).

Olympus did it right, and the paragraph above contains almost all the tweaks it made to the already good Pen EPL-1. In fact, the new camera does’t even get a new name, just an extra letter: EPL-1s.

A bigger change is the new kit lens, the 4-42mm II ƒ3.5-5.6 which shrinks down to 454g (one pound) and gets a video-friendly silent AF motor which is also faster to focus than the old model.

The EPL-1s can also be had in a nasty burgundy/red colorway.

The new kit is launching in Japan, hopefully making its way overseas soon.

Olympus Pen Lite [Olympus Japan]

See Also:

• New Olympus Pen Adds Flash, Loses Good Looks
• Olympus Pen EP-2, Now in Retro-Tastic Silver
• CES 2010: Samsung Joins Rangefinder Fray With Large-Sensor NX10 …

The very best thing about the DeluxeGear Lens Guard is that it looks like it was designed and made by a three-year old. Take a look: it’s as if this protective cover had been squished out of Play-Doh and stuck straight on the front of the lens.

In fact the Lens Guard is a little more high-tech than that. An inner neoprene core is covered with Santoprene, a cross between rubber and polypropylene which can be molded when hot and sets to a bendy, waterproof rubber-like material. According to Wikipedia, Santoprene is also used to make the blades of “training knives, swords, and bayonets” which is awesome.

Back on the camera, the Lens Guard is like an extreme lens-cap. You pop the cosy over the end of the lens and the shock-absorbing cover soaks up bumps, whilst shrugging off dust and water. If you’re the kind of person who keeps a lens-hood permanently attached to your lens not to reduce flare but to protect the front element from whacks and smack, this is for you.

The Lens Guard comes in three sizes, to fit lenses from 2.5-inches to 3.9-inches in diameter, all of which cost $15. Or you could just buy a tub of Play Doh and put the kids to work.

Lens Guard product page [DeluxeGear via Photography Bay]

See Also:

• Home-Made Protection: Rear Lens-Cap Pad for Stackable Storage …
• Make a Cheap Lens Case