Hello,
Could you advise me one lens for 4x5 and one for 8x10 for portrait work which can give me smooth skin (hide skin texture) and good overal contrast?
Many thanks.
Hello,
Could you advise me one lens for 4x5 and one for 8x10 for portrait work which can give me smooth skin (hide skin texture) and good overal contrast?
Many thanks.
Sounds like your looking for a soft focus lens.
don't rule out filtration and nets. Soft fx and black promist filters can work wonders.
A 14" Commercial Ektar for 8x10. Niiiiiiice!
"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"---EB White
Thanks!
Any other suggestions?
My very personal choise would be the Rodenstock Imagon variable soft focus lens.
The 250mm for 4x5" , the 300mm for 8x10".
Not cheap though.
I have the 250mm for 4x5 and love it, the lady's too.
Peter
I love my 10 inch Wollensak Veritar for 4x5 and 5x7. But if you don't have access or budget for a true soft focus or portrait lens, some of the old tricks are: one or more layers of black nylon netting between two uv filters, multiple dots of model airplane cement on a UV filter, or swirls or crossing lines of cement on the same, or even a VERY light smear of vaseline on a UV filter. Never do any of these directly on the lens.
You can control the degree of softness by burning a few small holes in the netting so that you have overlapping layers of sharp image with the slightly softened image created by the netting. One layer is very slight softening, two a bit more and three is about as much as you might want.
The patterns of glue work the same way. Many dots would be like a lot of tiny lens elements defocussing the image over the sharp image passed through the plane filter areas. Fewer dots or lines would mean slightly less softness.
All of these solutions place opportunities for a lot of flare out in front of your lens, so very careful shading of the lens or controlling the placement of the lights is very important.
Have fun.
Tim
"One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude." Carl Sandburg
You can also take a completely different approach and use a modern sharp and contrasty lens and a hard light, which sound like the opposite of what you think you need.... But blast the skin with hard direct light so it almost burns out and then control the contrast in printing (either analog or digital).
You don't always want soft and glowy, sometimes you just don't want to see the skin texture.
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