Small Format SOFT focus lenses

[f2bthere]

I have enjoyed reading this thread. Thank you one and all!

No one has mentioned the low end Lens Baby lenses. Mostly they're junky, but one is pretty good. My wife needed a head shot recently and after trying a few with my normal Nikon D7200/50mm combo, I brought out the Lensbaby Soft Focus. This is not their kit lens, which is just a single element, but a real lens with a flat field and good to the edges. I got it because I had been looking at their new $500 fancy metal soft focus macro lens and noticed that this one does almost the same thing for a lot less money (probably why they discontinued it when they brought out the fancy one).

I'm glad you brought up the Lensbaby. I have gotten interested in the Velvet 56, the fancy $500 metal lens you mentioned. This lens apparently uses Uncorrected spherical aberrations. From the images I have seen, it seems somewhat like the Imagon in effect, although the method is different and the effect is controlled by means of the aperture rather than disks.

Perhaps I will take one for the team and order up a copy

[Maris Rusis]

Egg Slicer, Second Drawer, Soft Focus

Gelatin-silver photograph on Freestyle Private Reserve VC FB photographic paper from a Kodak Tmax 100 negative exposed in a Mamiya RB67 camera fitted with a custom modified 65mm lens with standard optics removed and replaced by a single meniscus lens.

[goamules]

Nice egg cutter photo.

[russyoung]

Pentax 120mm soft focus lens, K2 filter, Acros developed in FX-39, Plustek scanner.

[Daniel Unkefer]

My collection of small Rodenstock Imagons.
Use these on my Plaubel Makiflexes.

120mm, 150mm, 200mm, 250mm, and 300mm.

2016-02-22 16.49.40 by Nokton48, on Flickr

[Reinhold Schable]

A quick lash-up attaching a 120mm f:2.1 Wollason Meniscus to an RB67...

Three examples: wide open, f:5.6, and f:11 ...


I've got to design some sort of adapter for easy set-up…
Reinhold

More on the lens here...
http://www.largeformatphotography.in...eniscus-lenses

[Reinhold Schable]

Designing an RB adapter is not simple, I'm still working on it…

In the meantime, here's an easy way to mount a lens to your RB with black vinyl electrical tape
In this example, the lens is on a hardboard clone of the common 96x99mm Technika board.
Thus it'll work on lots of 4x5's as well as any RB67.



Reinhold

More about these lenses here:
http://re-inventedphotoequip.com/Lenses.html

[Maris Rusis]

Matched Cutlery, Soft Focus

Gelatin-silver photograph on Ultrafine Silver Eagle VC FB photographic paper. image size 21.4cm X 16.2cm, from a Tmax 100 negative exposed in a Mamiya RB67 single lens reflex camera fitted with a 200mm f8 meniscus lens.

[goamules]

I got a lens I've always wanted to try at a yard sale. A Voigtlander Prominent Nokton 50/1.5. It is slightly soft at some angles, wide open. I got it on this camera, and kludged an adapter for the non-focusing mount with an old Leica goggle closeup adapter.

[xkaes]

Soft-focus lenses have been popular with smaller formats for quite a while -- and they are making a comeback -- not that they ever left. Here is a seven page (they RARELY did that!) article from the 1970's by David Brooks in Peteren's Photography:

http://www.subclub.org/fujinon/softfocuscompressed.pdf

It mainly covers lenses designed for 35mm to medium format cameras -- and as mentioned above, there were many.

Nowadays, there are new, and popular, ways to get softer images in the smaller formats, from pin-holes, SWINKS, Loreo "Lens-in-a-Cap", Lens-Babys, soft-focus/diffusion filters, close-up filters (WITHOUT A LENS), DIY soft-focus lenses removed from old, dead, cheap simple cameras and adapted, etc. More details on some of these at:

http://www.subclub.org/fujinon/close-up.htm