making a soft edge filter

jlamarca

jlamarca
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Jun 14, 2007
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I'm looking for a filter (or how to make a filter) that is significantly softer at the edges/corners than in the center. My Nokton lens has some sharpness falloff, but I want to create a mood that requires significantly more soft focus in the corners, and is not so tack sharp as the Nokton in the center either.

I know of the lensbaby, but this is taking the effect to the ridiculous/gimmicky extreme. Softening filters for portraiture seem to be pretty uniformly soft across the glass. I tried petroleum jelly around the edges of a UV filter but this creates strong flare much more so than soft focus at the edges.

Any suggestions?
 
Something like this? Or is that not sharp enough in the centre? Maybe you could achieve a similar effect by reversing an element in a lens. You could pick up a beater FSU lens to experiment with for pennies.

Another option would be a Holga or another medium format camera. With MF, even crappy lenses often appear quite sharp in the centre but show considerable softness towards the edges.

Matthew
 
Yeah I have a holga, and I like the falloff, but the vignetting can be pretty severe, and I don't really like shooting with it - so slow to wind and reload, and 120 is really expensive to shoot when you have a fixed aperture/shutter.

This lens pic you linked to - yeah it's too soft in the center at 2.5. Better at 5.6 but I can't tell what the corners look like with the all white background.
 
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