Lens that make sense

It’s so easy to take interesting photos and claim you’re a professional photographer, or at least a very enthusiastic hobbyist, these days. There’s Photoshop, where even poorly-lit portraits of the least photogenic faces are offered a fighting chance, courtesy of the Patch tool. Then there’s the lomo cam, every artist and artistic soul’s pathway to dreamy “unglamorized” photography.

Now, you don’t even need a computer program and/or a Russian camera to come up with nifty images just begging to be uploaded onto Facebook. Just a small little stick-on object that costs P200. It’s called the Illusion Lens: clear plastic about a centimeter in diameter encased in round colorful cases that you can stick onto digital cameras or mobile phone cams for quick, mobile photo art.

Each Illusion Lens features a different photography style. There’s the fisheye or wide-angle lens which makes portraits look essentially like those dogs with rounded noses posted on mugs and calendars being sold in hobby shops. There’s a soft lens that blurs and gives a dreamier effect to photos; the six-image mirage, which gives a fly’s eye’s tweak to photos; starburst, which blurs up the sides of the subject; heart and star frames, which (cheesily) enclose subjects’ faces in framing effects, and a few more (there are about 10 different lens styles). The lens come with a reusable stick-on gel that makes it attachable to cameras and mobile phones, and a little springy string that lets it dangle from phones.

It’s more fun than anything. Especially when you’re trapped inside the house on a rainy day. Using my camera phone, I gathered together a menagerie of my and my roommates’ stuffed animals and went on a shooting spree, capturing each subject with a different style. I soon figured out that the star frame doesn’t really come out as a star frame and that most of the lenses, excepting the spark lens which pretty much fires up a lighted subject, are basically useless when used with a flash. Without a flash and if you shoot indoors, the final photo looks a bit grainy and faded, just like those photos I’ve seen of my folks back in the ‘70s. But I think these actually add to the overall artistic effect. Although I think the Illusion lens would fare much better outdoors, under natural lighting and with, uh, more, active subjects.

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The Illusion Lens is available at National Bookstore, Hobbes & Landes, Powerbooks, Fully Booked, Compex, E-Media, Mobile Care and CVC Supermarkets. Log on illusionlens. multiply.com for more information.

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E-mail comments to ana_kalaw@ pldtdsl.net.