On Portrait Lenses

[Mark Sawyer]

I'm in a small local photo-history club (The Western Photographic Historical Society), and had to write a little something for the newsletter, so I went with "Portrait Lenses". I just doodled it out with a minor amount of research as I went along, but I thought I'd post it here for and constructive criticism (or well-deserved insults!) before submitting it. I'm sure I've made a few mistakes or overlooked something obvious, so do your worst! :)

On Portrait Lenses

(Note: after further editing, the article got too long for a single post, so it's in two parts on page three.)

[Peter De Smidt]

Well done!

[Jim Fitzgerald]

Mark, I think it is a very nice read. Not being an expert, although I love my small assortment of soft focus lenses I think you gave a good explanation. Maybe add a little more in the modern section...... but 100-150 year old stuff is way more interesting. Thanks for the article.

[Leszek Vogt]

I wasn't really looking for a typo, but did find one towards the end of the paragraph that starts with "One odd piece...."

Somehow I'd try to infuse "Dior" stocking or some other aids as being used with older and newer lenses. That's up to you.
Nice overview, Mark.

Les

[Mark Sawyer]

I wasn't really looking for a typo, but did find one towards the end of the paragraph that starts with "One odd piece...."

Somehow I'd try to infuse "Dior" stocking or some other aids as being used with older and newer lenses. That's up to you.
Nice overview, Mark.

Les

Thanks, Les! I fixed it. Hard to catch all the little things, especially when they can sneak by the spell check...

I'm still debating a paragraph on filters/stockings/Vaseline-on-the-lens...

[Steven Tribe]

Yes, very good overview. I think the "skin repair" section about dallmeyer's patent is very important - not just for females. Perhaps also saving retouching work?

Perhaps also something about Heliars with the renowned "glow" - but not the story about the Japanese court!

Resolution of the "first two series of Euryscopes" was new to me. I assume you mean series II and III? Series I Euryscope was the rehash of their first Petzval, in small sizes, and very fast (F2.3).

[Steve Goldstein]

Great article as far as the historical part goes, but the modern section is so brief that it seems like the article ends due to exhaustion. There are other (relatively) modern soft-focus lenses - I'm thinking of Rodenstock's Imagon, Fuji's soft-focus lenses, the Soft Focus Congo, and others I probably don't know about.

Maybe this should ultimately reside in the permanent "articles" section.

[Pere Casals]

Great article, I learned a lot !!! It also explains a lot of things in a short text, so it is very well condensed.

I'd like to comment next...





I don't understant this:

"This caused the focus from a wide-open lens to spread over a zone, rather than on a flat plane. Dallmeyer's aim was to increase the depth of field, which he did. But the spherical aberration also created what Dallmeyer termed a "soft focus", with a sharp core image overlaid with a softer image focused just off the focal plane."

Today we understand DOF as a direct calculation from aperture and focal length, so what I understand it was a try to change that... Still I don't understand it well, perhaps it should be clarified.





Also there are some 3 points I consider that can be interesting:


One is the Universal Heliar as a landmark, because it's technical prominence at the time, also Voigtländer activity can be traced since before 1800 (Camera obscura lenses) and one the first photographic lens maker (if not the first ) after 1840.

"The Voigtländer objectives were revolutionary because they were the first mathematically calculated precision objectives in the history of photography, developed by the German-Hungarian mathematics professor Josef Maximilian Petzval, with technical advice provided by Peter Voigtländer"

So Voigtländer created a photographic sharpness concept, but in the 1900 they developed the "Universal" variant to adjust that.

The Universal Heliar still it's unique today, because adjusted coma IMHO goes to the center of the image, so softening the face while rendering a sharp head silhouette (this is what I concluded, I can be mistaken).



The second one is Nikon DC 105 and 135. While razor sharp glasses they have a dedicated ring to control bokeh nature, an important concept for portraits, this shows that also small format had very elaborated choices for that, a bit hidden from public attention. Released in 1990 and still manufactured, today, 27 years later.



Third point is using other lenses for portrait, beyond portrait glass there are also portrait photographers that can exploit lens features fir that. Karsh used a 14" Commercial, and a lot of people used army surplus (USAF still was an army branch) 178 AeroEktars, this is reusing WWII bomber camera optics to create a powerful aesthetic subculture, with what it can be considered (some would say, in Japan ) a really weird bokeh, and that has links with the ancient Ptezvals: https://www.flickr.com/photos/maciek...125592977@N05/

[xkaes]

Here is a great article from Petersen's Photography (1979) by David Brooks about the various ways to get soft-focus results, including portraits -- with gear of that time. It has examples for 35mm, medium format and large format:

www.subclub.org/fujinon/softfocuscompressed.pdf

[Steven Tribe]

................One is the Universal Heliar as a landmark, because it's technical prominence at the time, also Voigtländer activity can be traced since before 1800 (Camera obscura lenses) and one the first photographic lens maker (if not the first ) after 1840.

"The Voigtländer objectives were revolutionary because they were the first mathematically calculated precision objectives in the history of photography, developed by the German-Hungarian mathematics professor Josef Maximilian Petzval, with technical advice provided by Peter Voigtländer"

So Voigtländer created a photographic sharpness concept, but in the 1900 they developed the "Universal" variant to adjust that.

The Universal Heliar still it's unique today, because adjusted coma IMHO goes to the center of the image, so softening the face while rendering a sharp head silhouette (this is what I concluded, I can be wrong................

I don't like this one bit!

Voigtlander and Petzval had a commercial agreement - not a joint technical development - and which went quickly sour!
Petzval and his helpers did achieve a fast and sharp lens - but they failed to match the visual and chemical focus.
Whilst the Universal is great, this is basically the same design as the Cooke triplet soft lenses which predate it.