Reviews |Lens Nest Review

Lens Nest Review

Review

Price when reviewed

£30

$40

Our Verdict

The Lens Nest is an attractive way of showing off your lenses. It takes up more room on a shelf than storing the lenses by themselves, but it makes them look like a feature. Its basis is a row of three, but you can other sections to extend it.

For

  • Attractive
  • Flexible-fitting and modular
  • Environmentally freindly

Against

  • Comes apart fairly easily
  • Takes up more space than the lenses alone

What is the Lens Nest?

A Lens Nest is a bit like a row of three or more adaptable coasters for lenses. It’s modular, made from natural cork and fits together like a simple jigsaw puzzle.

It comes supplied with a selection of rings and spacers so that it can be adapted to fit a range of different lenses.

Lens Nest has launched on Kickstarter and is sold as a minimum of a row of three units, a ‘left’, a ‘middle’ and a ‘right’, which connect together. It’s available with a natural cork finish or in dark grey.

Lensnest review

Build and handling

The first step in setting up the Lens Nest is to find the right size adapter ring for each of your lenses. Ideally, the ring should fit easily around the end cap on the lens without the lens touching it or the surrounding.

With the Lens Nest section upside down, pop in the adapter ring followed by the base piece. The base doesn’t fit flush with the bottom of the unit, it sits a little proud so that when the Lens Nest is the right way up, the base piece is in contact with the table or shelf.

Once you’ve selected the adapter rings and assembled the individual sections, they can be pieced together to create the row. Then you just put the lenses in the recesses.

It’s all very simple.

Performance

I tested the Lens Nest with a range of lenses for DLRs and mirrorless cameras. Lens Nest recommends that the maximum height of lens stored in a Lens Nest is 22cm. That means that most 70-200mm lens just fit.

It didn’t take long to find the appropriate ring to use with Canon EF, Nikon F, Fujifilm X, Sony E, L-mount and Micro Four Thirds lenses. However, the large Nikon Z mount only fits in without a ring and it needs the spacers to be used to raise the barrel away from the edges of the Lens Nest recess. If you don’t do that, it’s a nice snug fit, but when you lift the lens out of the Lens Nest, it lifts the sides a little, making the unit less stable.

I didn’t have a Canon RF mount lens to hand, but at 54mm in diameter, it’s 1mm smaller than the Nikon Z mount. That may means the lenses fit without a spacer, but it doesn’t give much wriggle room.

One issue is that the base unit of the Lens Nest comes out fairly easily, so if you move the Nest around or store different optics, you may need to flip it over and refit the base.