Soft focus lenses

[John Kasaian]

I'll agree with Jim Rhoads.

If what you want is an excuse to buy another lens you should be able to find one at a reasonable price. Theres plenty of old ones out there---some very good and some pretty cr*ppy(from my experience, the good ones seem to be on the heavy & big side ymmv.) FWIW the Wollensak 162mm f/4.5 series II velostigmat is relatively small and undervalued. Look for them wherever old Speed Graphics go to die---you should still be able to get one in a working shutter for under $100.

OTOH, If you just want to experiment, a bit of the Wife's pantyhose stretched over your 180 and held in place with a rubber band works pretty good and is easier to remove than vaseline.

[Bruce Watson]

Jim,

I'm with you. I don't own a Cooke, or any other soft focus lens. I think they are interesting, but I've never even used one. But... you asked why someone would buy one, and I gave you a possible reason. Me, I can buy a lot of film for the cost of a Cooke....

[Dean Lastoria]

Hi:
I don't know about the Cooke, but I have 2 Veritos and they are amazing. I tried the smudge, nail-polish on a filter, and mesh -- it's not the same animal at all. One is fuzzy, and the other has an unspecified depth that I couldn't describe. I can't believe how they have changed -- the first one cost $50.00, the next was a deal at $250.00 -- now I'd never afford one. I only contact print the soft negs -- enlargements aren't satisfactory.

In a turn of the century article, one suggestion to mimic a soft-focus lens was to focus on the subject, take a 1/4 exposure wide open, then rack out, another 1/4, rack out another 1/4 then rack out 1/4 -- you get the idea. That way there are 4 points of focus -- not infinite, but not a fuzzy smudge either. I never had the patience or a sturdy enough tri-pod for that many exposures.

Dean

[Ralph Barker]

There was a previous discussion here about the Verito lenses, and Will Whitaker provided this link to a page on his site with examples of a Verito at various apertures:


http://wfwhitaker.com/verito.htm

I did a little experiment a while back using 1/4" bubble wrap as a diffuser on a 150mm APO Symmar, with a hole cut out in the middle. Here's a scan of a 4x5 Polaroid:





Nothing like the images from a Verito, but potentially interesting.

[Ernest Purdum]

Dean, there was a means of automating the lprocedure you describe. In 1867, Claudet supplied a lens with a built-on gadget that madly twiddled an element separation control during the exposure. The amount of twiddling could be pre-set.



Mike's original request was for images he could look at. I know of a book full of them "Professional Portrait Lightings" edited by Abel. It was published just after WWII. In it about 100 studio photographers provide images and discuss their methods. Nearly all list the lens they used, more often soft-focus than not. Unfortunately, few mention the aperture. When they do, it's usually to say wide open. Two were using Darlot lenses that had no aperture control. They were either really ancient lenses from before Waterhouse slots, or, more likely perhaps, projection lenses. Now there's an interesting possibility for low cost experimentation. Projection lenses are still going cheap. They are ordinarily Petzvals.



Since the images in the book are photolithograph prints, they can't fully illustrate the subtleties of the photo images, but I think scanned and emailed images are even worse in this respect. I got my copy via www.abebooks.com at very modest price.

[Mark Sawyer]

Wow, $2,900 for a soft-focus Cooke lens... well, I guess it can make plain women seem beautiful, and an ugly world, romantic. But $2,900 for a lens with the same optical qualities as beer-goggles? Guess it produces the same results...

[Brian Ellis]

I've used the Nikon soft focus attachment with 35mm and it works very well. I also use it under my enlarger (or did when I still worked in the fume room). Under the enlarger it gives the opposite effect from on camera (shadows blend into highlights in one, highlights into shadows the other way or something like that, I can never remember which is which). The nice thing about using it under the enlarger is that you can vary the degree of the soft effect by exposing with and without the filter for varying amounts of time. When you use it on camera you're stuck with whatever the negative shows.

I'm not knowledgeable about the techniques achieved with a soft focus lens vis a vis vaseline et al but my understanding is that vaseline and similar things like nylon stockings just create a blurred image. A soft focus lens, or a soft focus filter such as the Nikon or Softar I would think, have portions in focus and portions out of focus with varying degrees of each. Hard to explain, probably because I don't understand it very well myself. I just know that photographs made with the Nikon attachment look much different than my (too many) overall blurred images.

[Jonathan Brewer]

Wow, $2,900 for a soft-focus Cooke lens... well, I guess it can make plain women seem beautiful, and an ugly world, romantic. But $2,900 for a lens with the same optical qualities as beer-goggles? Guess it produces the same results............................................................This was essentially my reaction after hearing the annoucement of the price of this lens, I just don't think this sums up what I've come to learn about this lens.

Clean and crisp and sometimes w/a indescribable sheen/glow/texture as opposed to fuzzy/mush/greasy/submerged under a dense fog, points you in the direction of what this lens can do. I investigated the performance of this lens by checking out what masters like Alvin Langdon Coburn did with the Pinkham Smiths, that includes portraiture and landscape, seeing the best utilize the father of this lens gave me an idea of what it's capable of in the right hands.

The idea of this lens, or vaseline smeared on a filter, black toule netting, Softars, softnets, the old style tiffen diffusion filters which duplicate the idea of vaseline smeared on a filter, womens stocking, any of this stuff is a small fraction of what goes into softening/muting an image. The lighting ratio used is going to affect the image, distance is also a function of diffusion, diffusion which is too much at one distance is not enough at another, one stop is way too much, one is way too little, also I think diffusion tends to work a lot more effectively with profile lighting/sidelighting/rimlighting as opposed to frontal lighting although this is somewhat of a stretch, playing around with all the variables until you've gotten everything just right creates a 'sweet spot' where everything comes together, with a final effect that was the result of no one particular thing that creates what I saw in what some folks were able to do w/the Pinkham Smith.

I guess what I'm saying is that slapping on a certain filter or lens isn't the whole story, there are several other variables involved,...........................not a lot of work has been done w/the PS 945, my understanding is that there are around 50 that've been purchased, but you can check out plenty of work done w/the Pinkham Smith Visual Quality IV, and I think that's a better indicator of what the lens is all about, the entry price is VERY STEEP, agreed, as it is w/an Ebony, a Linhof, a Leica MP, ....................I like this lens because of the idea of its prestation of texture and patina.

The idea of paying $2,500 for a Leica MP is ridiculous TOO ME, BUT NOT for some other folks, I can understand why they want what they want, same thing w/this lens, it's worth every penny to some folks, and too much money to others.

Checking out some the masterworks done with the Pinham Smith Visual Quality IV will underscore the fact that the effect of the lens can be very different than smearing vaseline on a filter to achieve soft focus, ironically this isn't just a soft focus lens, it's more of a portrait lens that can transmit imagery through a distinct veil of 'smoothness', check out some of the work done w/the Pinkham Smiths.

[Ole Tjugen]

The classic Voigtlander Universal Heliar is one of those lenses with adjustable softness through a movable lens group - in that case the central element AFAIK. Even a "normal" Heliar is ultra-smooth - I can only imagine what a Universal would be like.