Portland, OR—The Lensbaby Sweet 22 pancake lens features the smallest sweet spot with the most blur outside the sweet spot of any Lensbaby lens yet. Further, with a compact, metal body, the selective focus lens will focus down to 5 inches from the front element.
“A sea of impressionistic blur gradually transitioning to a precise, tack sharp sweet spot gives photographers the chance to create imagery more dramatic than previous selective focus lenses,” the company announced.
Lensbaby Sweet 22
Lensbaby engineered this new mirrorless-only creative effects lens to bring dramatic optical effects to still photos as well as video imagery. Known for their selective focus capabilities, the existing Sweet 35, Sweet 50 and Sweet 80 lenses allow photographers to isolate a specific area of the frame in sharp focus while gradually blurring the surrounding area. This creates a sweet spot of focus that photographers can move around the frame by tilting the lens in the Lensbaby Composer Pro II.
What’s more, the compact, tack-sharp, centered sweet spot created by the Sweet 22 gives a sense of motion to still images. Lensbaby also designed the pancake lens to create dramatic focus transitions of moving subject matter coming into or out of the Sweet 22’s sweet spot when shooting video.
In addition to this dramatic selective focus effect, the new lens boasts a super-wide angle of view of almost 90º on full-frame cameras. As a result, photographers can pinpoint a single subject from its surroundings while getting up close, down to 5 inches away from the lens, to separate the subject from its background. 
Further, the lens has a fixed aperture of f/3.5 to maximize the blurring effect. However, in very bright sunlight, the camera’s maximum shutter speed may not be fast enough to prevent overexposure. To solve this, Lensbaby includes a 3-stop ND8 (neutral density) filter to reduce the amount of incoming light. Additionally, the Sweet 22 has a 46mm filter thread, so photographers can use other filters, such as a CPL polarization filter.
Available Mounts
The Sweet 22 is compatible with both APS-C and full-frame mirrorless cameras. Lensbaby is making it available in several mounts. They include the Canon RF, Nikon Z, Sony E, Fujifilm X as well as the L mount.
Moreover, the kit bundles the Sweet 22 stand-alone lens; a zippered clamshell case; a lens cloth; as well as the ND filter. The Lensbaby Sweet 22 kit has a suggested retail price of $222.95.
