Re-assessing my (un)sharpest lenses

[peter brooks]

These are really great comparisons. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this!

[Havoc]

I am probably going completely wrong here, but somehow I got the impression that "being unsharp" isn't THE property of soft focus lenses. I seem to have read that the difference lies in how they render specular highlights. It could even be I read this in a thread here, can't find it back. But there were some very impressive examples of that. There was a kind of "glow" around those highlights. And that is something I'm missing in the photos here.

This says nothing about the photos itself, they are great portraits and it is a valuable series.

[cowanw]

These are really great comparisons. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this!

Thanks for looking. I am pleased if folks can make use of it.
Regards
Bill

[cowanw]

I am probably going completely wrong here, but somehow I got the impression that "being unsharp" isn't THE property of soft focus lenses. I seem to have read that the difference lies in how they render specular highlights. It could even be I read this in a thread here, can't find it back. But there were some very impressive examples of that. There was a kind of "glow" around those highlights. And that is something I'm missing in the photos here.

This says nothing about the photos itself, they are great portraits and it is a valuable series.

That is a very good observation. The glow is an aspect that I think the digitalization of the prints and seeing them on screen has diminished. That said if you click on any the first three images (post 1) and enlarge to 200 %, you should discern the glow to the right of the face and hat and that this diminishes as the each subsequent lens loses the soft focus character.
Another aspect of soft focus lenses is the sense of both a sharp and soft image as one at the plane of focus. Lenses that use chromatic aberrations exhibit this whereas lenses that employ spherical aberrations tend to an overall soft look. (I think that is correct, someone will correct me if I am wrong).
Bernice's humourous reference to sorta-focus lens earlier jokes that there is no actual plane of focus (I think) but these types of lenses obey the laws of optics- they just use them to a different end. The appearance of specular highlights depends, as Bernice pointed out, on the nature of the lighting and that is not well demonstrated in this series.
The Unsharp in the title was really just playing on the frequent focus on the Sharpest lens.
Regards
Bill

[Tin Can]

The sow needs pearls

so I use them

[cowanw]

and so to return to wallow in the mud of the unsharp.

[Tin Can]

Me too

Thx

[ic-racer]

I don't know what happened to the site, but in the last year I noticed everything I post is soft focus. Same for the images in this thread. They are all soft focus and many of them look the same on my computer monitor.

[Tin Can]

This why we print

[Jim Andrada]

I don't know what happened to the site, but in the last year I noticed everything I post is soft focus. Same for the images in this thread. They are all soft focus and many of them look the same on my computer monitor.

They're probably dropping the resolution of the images to minimize storage requirements