I've always admired your work Peter - the focused and unfocused alike! I think these images demonstrate that not tack sharp isn't necessarily an impediment to a compelling image. Better lenses certainly offer greater opportunity for selective focus. It'd be hard to imagine some of these effects coming from an f8 Holga. Lots of smeary DOF there!
Perhaps as artists we should aspire to the most neutral lenses - the ones most free from aberrations and distortions and which falls somewhere between 28-ish and 50-ish mm ('normal' within most people's vision and medium / crop factor, I guess). Anyway, my thinking is that the more neutral the lens one uses the more one can focus on creating the image they are chasing rather than simply relying on a deficient (i.e. compromised, distorted) lens or digital filter to give you the 'effect', plug and play style, that the lens provides ... time after time.
