The title is a little bit of a challenge, because I've been looking for small classic era soft focus lenses for years, and they are very, very hard to find. Something like a Verito, or one of the many meniscus soft focus lenses like a Struss, Portrait Plastigmat, Cooke Semi-achromat in 1 to 3 inch focal length, for around a 35mm film size, is almost non-existent. I say almost, because I know Hollywood used a few soft focus lenses, during the silent through the classic eras. You see them often when you watch old movies, when the scene flashes to a closeup of the beautiful girl. How do they do that, it looks great! It's been discussed a little on other threads.
Isn't the paradox interesting, that small format people (35mm Leica, Digital mirrorless, and now Black Magic Pocket Cine Camera users) all want extreme sharpness, edge to edge, with no vignetting, field curve, or aberrations at all? I mean, they're shooting lenses the size of your thumb to the size of a juice can. Tiny glass, has to be worked VERY intensively to get those results on a postage stamp sized format. Meanwhile, a lot of Large Format people WANT aberrations, swirl, soft focus. Yet their format is 5, 10, or more inches across! Trying to get sharp on a thumbnail sized frame, and soft on a frame the size of a window. Just seems funny.
Anyway, through a lucky purchase, I finally got one of the lenses reputed to be soft. I've been looking for one for years, but didn't want to pay the high prices from some of the Buy It Now venders that seem to have everything. So I waited. Months became years. The children grew up, and went to college....that type of time frame. Is this a Holy Grail lens? Not really, they are pretty much unknown or forgotten by 99.9% of the small format photographers. But that's the things I like! If anything, the C-mount lens craze is tapering off. But I think it will continue in spurts, as people continue shooting micro 4/3 cameras and movie cameras.
This is a rebranded Kino Plasmat 1" F1.5 by Hugo Meyer. Dr. Paul Rudolph invented the first Anastigmats, the Protars in the 1890s. He came out of retirement after WWI to build a fast cinema camera lens at Hugo Meyer. The F1.5 version came out in 1922, and many are engraved with his name around the front glass. Studying the design, basically a Dagor derivative, you wouldn't think they would be soft. And looking at a lot of people's shots who owned them, I couldn't be sure if they were soft either. But it was on my list of "small format, possibly soft" lenses to try. I got the lens last night, very worn, very stiff focus, but it has potential. Shot was taken of another rare lens I got at the same time (early Christmas!), a Cooke Ivotal, and another innocuous lens.
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