There is a very inexpensive way to try soft focus effects without buying an
extra lens. It involves ruining a couple of UV or skylight filters by
painting a dark circle in the center of each with something opaque. Black
nail polish should work. Temporary versions can be made with cut pieces of
electrical tape to determine the best size of the spot.
You run the lens wide open, or nearly so, and use the various-sized
dark-circled filters as your f-stop. The less of the center of the lens
you use, the softer the image will be.
In the 1930s, Leitz actually made a lens designed to be used in this
manner--the 90mm f/2.2 Thambar. My suspicion is that it was a lens that
should have only been f/4 or f/5.6, deliberately made bigger so the
aberrations would create a soft focus when used at wide apertures.
I'm sure a dedicated soft-focus lens would be better. But for
experimenting or dabbling, you can't beat the price. I haven't ever tried
this myself, but I've heard of others doing it. It's great way to use that
lousy 3rd-party lens from the 70s that's unsharp wider than f/8. :-)
--Peter
At 02:42 PM 04/06/1999 -0400, Tomoko wrote:
>Since my niece mentioned that she would like to take photos with
soft-focusing
>effects, I started noticing that there are new lenses emphasizing the
softness
>of focusing. At first, the available soft lenses are from camera
manufacturers
>or a very expensive German lens, but I stumbled on more reasonable
possibilities
>provided that they are exported to the rest of the world.
>
>Kenko makes three soft lenses in 35mm/4, 45mm/4.5 and 85mm/2.5. The Olympus
>mount is available. The list prices ranges from 29,800 to 38,000yen.
--- Peter
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