3rd Generation Selective Focus SLR Lens wins the Manual-focus Lens Category

San Antonio, TX (January 15, 2007) - Lensbabies, LLC announces today at Imaging USA that its 3rd generation selective focus Single Lens-Reflex (SLR) lens, Lensbaby 3G , has received the prestigious 2007 Hot One Award in the Manual-focus Lens category from Professional Photographer magazine.

This eighth annual award honors professional photographic products that are revolutionizing today's imaging industry. The awards were open to new or significantly revised products released between August 5, 2005 and December 31, 2006.

"We are honored to have been selected the best of the best in the Manual-focus lens category by the very knowledgeable Hot One Award judges," said Craig Strong, the inventor of the Lensbaby and Co-Founder of Lensbabies, LLC. "In designing the Lensbaby 3G, we kept in mind the feedback we had received from creative professional photographers over the years about features they would like to see in a future Lensbaby lens that would make their jobs easier - most important was the repeatability factor featured in the Lensbaby 3G. This award shows that our efforts did not go unnoticed."

This is a third consecutive Hot One Award for Lensbabies. Earlier generations of Lensbabies have won the 2005 and 2006 Hot One Awards in the Manual Focus Lens category. The Lensbaby 3G has also received a 2007 PC Photo Editor's Choice award.

About the Lensbaby 3G
The Lensbaby 3G SLR lens allows photographers to lock the Lensbaby in a desired bent position simply by pressing a button on the lens. Then, using a traditional barrel focus mechanism, photographers can do fine focusing and precisely place the sweet spot of sharp focus before pressing the shutter release. The Original Lensbaby lens and the Lensbaby 2.0 lens require the photographer to manually hold the Lensbaby in a bent position while pressing the shutter release.

Lensbaby 3G features the same low dispersion, high refractive index, multi-coated optical glass doublet and the same flexible tubing as Lensbaby 2.0, but adds three focusing rails that emerge from the camera mount and pass through the focusing collar. A trigger button on the focusing collar releases three pins that engage the focusing rails and lock Lensbaby 3G in a bent position.

Once Lensbaby 3G is locked into place, additional fine focus can be achieved by turning the barrel focusing ring, which moves the optic in and out like a normal manual focus lens. Also, in the locked position, a photographer can make small adjustments to the placement of the sweet spot of focus by turning any combination of the three focusing rails.

Lensbaby 3G SLR lenses are available now on www.Lensbabies.com, by calling 877-536-7222 / 971-223-5662, and from select specialty photo stores. Lensbaby 3G is available in mounts for Canon EF, Nikon F, Olympus 4/3rds/Panasonic, Pentax K/Samsung GX, Sony Alpha/Minolta Maxxum and Leica R SLR camera bodies. Optional accessories include the Lensbaby Macro Kit™. Photographers can also mount a variety of 37mm threaded accessories, such as wide angle and telephoto conversion lenses, onto the front of their Lensbaby.