Well, it's like this...
We've been covering photo-history in my high school classes lately, and when we looked at the soft focus stuff from the Photo-Secession through Hurrell, I also brought in some stuff made with my vintage and home-made soft focus lenses.
The kids liked them, and a few wanted to try out the soft-focus look, but I didn't want to bring in the expensive old ones (teen-agers are pretty rough on photo equipment...), and my home-made ones are just for me. So I decided there must be a good third option...
Down to the 99-cent store I went, and bought a few magnifying glasses, cheap but made with real glass at least... There were two (small and medium) together for 99 cents, and a larger one for 99 cents by itself. The focal lengths turned out to be 9.5", 12", and 14", and all had an f/stop of about f/3.8. Perfect!
I ground the plastic handle off the 9.5" lens, and attached it to a blank lensboard with a bead of "liquid nails". We put it on the Cambo 4x5 at school, and tried it out. Without a shutter, we'd focus, cover the lens, pull the darkslide, turn off the room lights, pop the flash (bounced off an umbrella), cover the lens, flip on the room lights and reinsert the darkslide. These are from the first day's work, some by me, some by students. I could tell you which were which, but it doesn't really matter...
A few from the 2F99c (2 for 99 cents!) lens:
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