Bokeh

[Shen45]

Can or does an enlarging lens affect "bokeh" in an image. I have a series of six enlarging lenses from the 1940's to the 1990's. While all are very sharp they appear to impart a certain look of their own from oldest to newest.

Bokeh may not of course be the correct word but hopefully will stimulate some discussion.

[cyrus]

Yes sort of. Any lens has its own effect. I did a series of 1940's style vintage portraits and the old soft Wollensack enlarger lens really helped get that certain effect. Not sure if bokeh is technically the right term since it specifically refers to the look of out of focus areas and once you focus an enlarger there are no out of focus areas but in general yes enlarger lenses have their own effect on a print

[polyglot]

The whole image should be in focus during enlargement, otherwise you have a bad enlarging lens without a flat field. So there shouldn't be any bokeh effects as such during enlargement.

However, there are plenty of lens aberrations (and variations in contrast) that are visible in the focused areas like spherical aberration, coma, astigmatism, chromatic aberration, etc. Certainly you can have different looks.