Soft Focus Lenses and Filters Usage

[Tin Can]

Woke up thinking about this, I see we have 2 more threads today about filters

Perhaps discuss why SF became/desirable

and is still common today in stills and movies from the old days to now

even Zoom has filters and can change our backdrop, face appearance which is now also called a filter

Artistic purpose drives it all from the beginning of photo art to a completely digital capture with image appearing on walls in any mode

Meow

[Tin Can]

PICTORIALISM (https://www.theartstory.org/movement/pictorialism/)

Is becoming my favorite as it closely resembles my poor vision since birth

Everything was OOF and soft

When I finally got eyeglasses years late my vision more resembled f64 era

[Tin Can]

This link has a good summary (https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-soft-focus-photography/)

but there is more to the chase

[Mark Sawyer]

For the emergence of softer imagery as an aesthetic in the photographic arts, read Peter Henry Emerson's 1889 Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art.

Commercially, soft focus became a style in portraiture decades later because it was flattering and eliminated the need for retouching, (something mentioned almost universally in soft lens advertisements).

[Jody_S]

The more interesting question is why soft focus, the answer requires (IMHO) a somewhat lengthy examination of the psychology of vision. I don't mean Freudian or analytical psychology, I mean the mechanics of how our brains process images and how that is connected to our emotional states, cognition, etc. Our eyes are not cameras designed to reproduce 'reality', they are organs designed to help us function in our environment. And since 'processing power' is actually at a premium in our brains (despite what pop psychology would have you think), our eyes and occipital lobes process information in a way that was most helpful to our survival tens of thousands of years ago. They use a lot of shortcuts.

One of the frustrations of a beginning photographer is to see a finished image and find that what he had 'seen' in the scene he photographed is simply 'not there' in the finished photograph. Because what he had 'seen' was the product of those cognitive shortcuts in his brain and not an arrangement of colors and shadows as captured by the camera. Soft focus gives us a tool to translate into an image what our brains translate a scene into, in a way that can possibly be communicated to another viewer with different cognitive processes and emotional attachment to the subject. Or it simply illustrates that our eyes/brain do not perceive scenes the way a mechanical process does.

[BrianShaw]

In some circles there is little to discuss. Ask any woman, and most men, over 50 who have had their portrait taken.

[Jody_S]

In some circles there is little to discuss. Ask any woman, and most men, over 50 who have had their portrait taken.

Well, precisely. We don't see ourselves the way a sharp portrait would render our face. The question is: which one does your wife see when she looks at you? The sharp one with all the wrinkles, or the softer, kinder one without all the flaws? And does that change depending on circumstances, and if yes, which circumstances?

[BrianShaw]

I took a beautiful pic of my beloved wife recently. Used a Softar1. She wants me to use a Softar2 in the future. LOL.

I have no idea what she sees when she looks at me but I’m eligible for a Softar2 also.

The difference is that I think she’s beuutiful even in sharp focus but she wants everyone to see her softened. I don’t care what I look like... I look like I look.

[BrianShaw]

... and with regards to non-portrait soft focus... I like pictorialism.

[Tin Can]

Mirrors are also a problem as they too lie

What we see in a mirror is not what the camera sees

I gave up with a close fiend (sp intended) so I set up dslr and large monitor for sitter to take portrait with remote trigger aka WYSIWYG

100's of shots later still not happy

notice I don't specify gender

right now messing my hair and beard for my most insane appearance for a Zoom meeting in 20 minutes with a log cabin Zoom background, I shot nearby

I will try for screen grabs, never tried that either

[Dugan]

Be sure to refer to yourself in the third person, Randy.
:)
Sorry for OT...couldn't resist.

[LabRat]

Mirrors are also a problem as they too lie

What we see in a mirror is not what the camera sees

I gave up with a close fiend (sp intended) so I set up dslr and large monitor for sitter to take portrait with remote trigger aka WYSIWYG

100's of shots later still not happy

notice I don't specify gender

right now messing my hair and beard for my most insane appearance for a Zoom meeting in 20 minutes with a log cabin Zoom background, I shot nearby

I will try for screen grabs, never tried that either

Was talking to the manager at a large pro lab in Hollywood years ago, and he was having a problem with an older lady actress customer who insisted her printed headshots did not look right... Told him we had that problem too with a customer, but finally re-printed it with the neg flopped to reverse it... She saw it and said "it is perfect now"...

She was delighted, but it looked weird to everyone else... :-(

Steve K

[Matt Stage]

As we live in a world where there are smart mirrors, (https://www.mirror.co/shop/mirror?utm_source=google_ads&utm_medium=google_shopping&utm_campaign=mirror_shopping) certainly there should be apps that would adjust the reflection that we see according to what we want to see. But who wouldn't be happy with the classic application? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br0DCEEBplY

[BrianShaw]

LOL. Mirrors indeed lie. I look into them and have no idea who that old man is that looks back. I don’t feel nearly as old as that lying mirror and lying driver’s license says I am!

[Tin Can]

I was moving when this SF thread appeared, so missed it

soft focus lenses 2017 march (https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?137623-soft-focus-lenses&p=1379982&viewfull=1#post1379982)

Good stuff in it

[Tin Can]

Our last wife used the royal 'We'. RIP Queen

They are happy


Be sure to refer to yourself in the third person, Randy.
:)
Sorry for OT...couldn't resist.

[Mark Sawyer]

It's not just what we look like in a photograph vs. in real life. It's how we look at people in real life vs. how we look at people in photographs.

When I'm talking to someone, I look at them, but I don't do an up-close study of their wrinkles and pores. When I see a photographic portrait, it seems much more likely I'll get inches away and spend some time studying the face, the skin textures, the flaws...