Freelensing Tips and Inspiration with a Broken Nifty 50mm Lens

SLR Lounge Staff
SLR Lounge
Published in
6 min readMay 18, 2023

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Freelensing is a creative technique in photography that involves detaching the lens from the camera body and manually holding it in front of the sensor while capturing an image. By disconnecting the lens, photographers can achieve unique and artistic effects, including selective focus, light leaks, and dreamy, ethereal qualities in their photographs. In this article, we’ll give you some freelensing tips and show you some examples with a 50mm lens to help with your creative photography.

Note: If you find the idea of breaking a lens apart or having a camera sensor exposed to the elements abhorrent and sacrilegious, this may not be the right article for you. Reader, you have been warned.

How Does Freelensing Work?

By manually moving the lens elements not just forwards and backwards from the image sensor (like a normal lens does), but up, down, or even diagonally, you’re able do things with the focus plane that are normally impossible, unless you spend $2000 on a fancy tilt-shift lens.

How to Get Started with Freelensing

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SLR Lounge
SLR Lounge

Published in SLR Lounge

SLR Lounge is a free online resource created by photographers for photographers featuring tutorials on Lightroom, Photoshop, Shooting, Lighting and much more.

SLR Lounge Staff
SLR Lounge Staff

Written by SLR Lounge Staff

SLR Lounge is a free online resource created by photographers for photographers featuring tutorials on Lightroom, Photoshop, Shooting, Lighting and much more.

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