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Thread: Soft Focus Lenses and Filters Usage

  1. #1
    Tin Can's Avatar
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    Soft Focus Lenses and Filters Usage

    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

  2. #2
    Tin Can's Avatar
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    Re: Soft Focus Lenses and Filters Usage

    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

  3. #3
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    Re: Soft Focus Lenses and Filters Usage

    This link has a good summary

    but there is more to the chase
    Tin Can

  4. #4
    Mark Sawyer's Avatar
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    Re: Soft Focus Lenses and Filters Usage

    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).
    "I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."

  5. #5
    (Shrek)
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    Re: Soft Focus Lenses and Filters Usage

    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.

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    Re: Soft Focus Lenses and Filters Usage

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

  7. #7
    (Shrek)
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    Re: Soft Focus Lenses and Filters Usage

    Quote Originally Posted by BrianShaw View Post
    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?

  8. #8

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    Re: Soft Focus Lenses and Filters Usage

    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.

  9. #9

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    Re: Soft Focus Lenses and Filters Usage

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

  10. #10
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    Re: Soft Focus Lenses and Filters Usage

    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
    Tin Can

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