Getting Unique Looks with a “Toy Lens”

The SLR Magic 26mm f/1.4 Toy Lens is a tiny little C-mount lens with a unique feature. When opened up all the way to f/1.4, this lens creates a beautiful, twisty bokeh swirl on its edges, perfect for creating a lo-fi vintage look and giving your subject an almost medium format 3D pop.

This "toy lens" is designed to be used on a 2x crop Micro Four Thirds sensor camera. SLR Magic even sells the lens with a dedicated C-mount to MFT adapter, but I like to use it on my full frame Sony E-mount camera with our Fotodiox C-mount to MFT adapter. This allows me to capture the entire swirly bokeh image circle of the lens.

This full image circle vignette style of photography isn't for everyone. To be sure, this lens was never intended to be used this way, but I really enjoy the old-fashioned mood I can create with the vignette. I'm capturing all of the swirly bokeh, plus I can use the circular vignette as a framing device.

The SLR Magic Toy Lens also works well for video. I use a 1.8x Clear Image Zoom crop on my Sony to remove most of the vignette, while still keeping a bit of it at the edges.

Click the video below to see some sample footage using the SLR Toy Lens:

The SLR Magic Toy Lens definitely works best on a Micro Four Thirds camera, but it's a fun experimental lens for full frame cameras too.