A DHL package arrived few days ago and in it was the Petzval 58 Bokeh Control Art Lens that Lomography sent me.
The original Petzval lens was invented by Joseph Petzval in 1840, for use mainly in portrait photography. It has that unique swirly bokeh in the background. In 2013, the folks at Lomography launched a Kickstarter campaign to redesign and reinvent the Petzval lens. The new Petzval only comes in either Canon or Nikon mount. An adapter to Fuji X mount was included in the package for me.
Here is one of the first few shots I took. Look at the bokeh in the background. It swirls. Not all background will be swirly though. I am still experimenting what background gives me the best swirly bokeh. The focusing distance and the distance to the background also matter.
Other than the usual manual control for aperture and focusing, the new Petzval has a Bokeh Control ring. You can dial from +1 to +7, with +7 gives you the most swirl effect. Cool right?
I will share more images from my experiment with this lens. Subscribe and come back to check out more. Thank you.