Best gifts to buy for someone who already has a digital camera (part 2)

Digital SLR users are among the easiest folks to shop for during the holidays. Either they’ve spent so much on their cameras that they can’t afford more accessories, or they have an insatiable appetite for shiny new toys to feed their gear habit. Either way you can’t miss with one of the products below. These relatively inexpensive “selective focus”lenses (as the inventor calls them), are among my professional photographer husband’s favorite photographic toys. Essentially, a Lensbaby allows you to manually select an area of sharp focus while the rest of your image remains blurry, giving your SLR something like the effect of a tilt-shift lens (minus the price and precision). There are three versions available, the Original ($96), 2.0 ($150), and 3G ($270). I chose the Lensbaby 2.0 because it was a significant improvement over the Original (with better optics and a higher maximum aperture of f/2.0), but still well priced. If you splurge for the 3G version, you’ll be able to set the focus more precisely and lock the settings while you adjust camera controls. With the two earlier versions, the process is much more variable, but then that is part of the Lensbaby charm as well.