Paolo Roversi - soft focus lens or slight defocus

[SadChi]

Hello,

Recently i found several pictures by Paolo Roversi. They are beautifil. Could you help to identify what lens were used. It seems that lens or soft focus or Paolo uses slight defocus. I didn't find razor sharpness, but 3d look is achived.

Best regards.

[benrains]

Roversi mainly shoots Polaroid 8x10 film using either natural lighting or incandescent studio lighting with relatively long exposures. It's also obvious from a much of his work that he uses relatively wide apertures sometimes with tilts. All of those things combine to produce a softer look.

As for specific lenses, that's a little harder to say, but here's a photo attributed to him which is one of his models using his camera to take a picture of herself in a mirror. The lens looks like a Kodak Commercial Ektar of some sort-
http://s48.radikal.ru/i121/0812/c6/b0d1eb72f258.jpg

One of the images on his website is a b&w portrait of a model holding up a lens mounted in a Deardorff board to her right eye (presumably its one of his lenses). Although the lens make/model is clear to me, the curved lever peaking out from the shutter makes me think it has a Compur shutter.

There's a good interview with him that was done by PDN a few years ago that's available as a PDF on his website-
http://www.paoloroversi.com/images/pdf/photodistrict.pdf

[Frank Petronio]

Ektars and Dagors are plenty sharp but some of his portraits are 10 second long exposures. He is a great photographer but it is a measure of how good those models are that they can hold that and still show expression and life, just to give credit where credit is due. The waifs he photographers are amongst the best models in the world.

[John O'Connell]

I read, and I'm not sure where, that Roversi once gave an effusive interview about his Dagors, but I'd say that the lens he uses is less of a factor in his photographs than his studio skills & choice of format and materials (Polaroid).

[SadChi]

Thanks to everyone.

[csant]

In the book Studio there is a close-up shot of the front of his 8x10 DD with a 12" golden dagor.