Soft or Sharp

[gb hill]

Ok, I'm watching the first few minuets of a Paul Strand documentary & they discuss how Strand used a soft focus lens as a tool in creating his artistic photographs. This got me thinking, how today it seems soft focus lenses are frowned upon, that we tend to judge the excellence of a lens based on sharpness. What are your thoughts on this? Do you choose a soft lens to make artistic photographs?

BTW here is the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP5YTqqoAqA

 

[Brian Legge]

I think it depends on what people are photographing. Portrait photographers in particular still routinely use softer lenses (or take actions to soften the results).

Most casual shooters go for more general purposes lenses which means sharp. Same thing here where there are a lot of street shooters trying to get all the detail they can.

 

[anjoca76]

Very good point. I always have a, no pun intended, soft spot or soft lenses in portraiture.

 

[icebear]

If for a special purpose you need a soft rendering lens just smear some butter over a filter in front of the lens.

 

[Heru Anggono]

I always keep one Sonnar LTM lens just for portraiture, a Nikkor or Canon. I don't like PP effect or filter (physical/software).

I think Hasselblad has a set of lens just for this purpose.

 

[Chris101]

I just whatever lens I have at hand that works. I rarely pay any attention to the sharpness, unless the picture requires extreme acuity.

 

[daveleo]

I have been exploring softer images, and I really like the effect in many of my pictures. I have been using various glass filters, but their effects are locked in once you hit the button. Postprocessing gives you much more latitude as to results ....better fine tuning.

If I knew of a softer Nikon SLR lens, I'd probably buy one and test it out.

 

[TXForester]

I don't choose in my own photos. When looking at other people's photos, I do like soft portraits. I especially like them where the portraits are intended to be romantic. I don't see razor sharp images as anything special, but I'm not against them. I look at the whole photo (light, composition etc.) and see if it works for me. In some cases, I don't notice softness till a pixel peeper/gear head points it out as a "fault."

 

[peterm1]

My favourite lens for portraits is the Nikkor 85mm f1.4 AF D. Its far from being sharp when shot wide open. In fact at most operating apertures the 85mm f1.8 is sharper. But its a nice portrait lens for this reason.

Overall, the best lenses for portraits in my view are ones that have a combination of being reasonably sharp combined with a touch of softness. Many Sonnar lenses are like this and its hard to surpass this optical formula for portraits. I dont know what the Nikkor is but it also has some of this characteristic combined with buttery soft bokeh.

To heighten the effect, I also often add a little blur or glow in post processing when shooting portraits to further soften the image.

An example


Flautist by yoyomaoz, on Flickr

 

[Roger Hicks]

A basic flaw in some people's photography -- I do not exclude my own -- is buying a piece of kit and then trying to take pictures with it, instead of either trying to work put what would be the best piece of kit for a particular shot or trying how to use their existing kit to the best effect. Increasingly, I try to concentrate on the latter.

Having aid this, I own several deliberately soft focus lenses -- Thambar, Dreamagon and a Subjectiv with several inserts -- and I have or have had others which are more or less soft wide open -- Canon 50/1.2, Tessar 300/3.5 for 8x10, 85/2 Jupiter, early 90 Summicron, 58/2 Biotar, and so forth. There are some things I use 'em for, and other things I don't.

Every single way of getting soft focus -- nose-grease on filters, Softars, post-processing, zone plates, pinholes, soft-focus lenses -- gives different effects. Some have never (or almost never) worked for me for any subject; others have worked more or less for some subjects. But I don't think it makes sense to generalize and lump them all together as 'soft focus'.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Jockos]

I have a question in this category that I cannot answer myself, since I no longer have darkroom access:

Instead of using grease on your camera lens, wouldn't it be better to produce a sharp negative and the grease your enlarger lens? You could then choose in post which version looks the best.
Even the Thambar metal spot filter could be put on your EL lens.

Anyone of you old timers tried this?

 

[perzpective]

The 50 1.2 delivers some creepy, yet unique qualities of softness to an image that I think is absolutely beautiful. I've been exploring its softness as a tool recently as well and have enjoyed it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/perzpective/8648135305/in/photostream

 

[Roger Hicks]

I have a question in this category that I cannot answer myself, since I no longer have darkroom access:

Instead of using grease on your camera lens, wouldn't it be better to produce a sharp negative and the grease your enlarger lens? You could then choose in post which version looks the best.
Even the Thambar metal spot filter could be put on your EL lens.

Anyone of you old timers tried this?

Different effect again. Instead of the highlights spreading into the shadows and creating a 'glow', the shadows spread into the highlights and make for a murkier, more sombre picture. From this you can tell that yes, it's quite a well known technique.

As for the spot filter, no, it couldn't. The spot is far too big to use on the vast majority of enlarger lenses, even if you could work out how to secure the filter under the lens.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Jockos]

Different effect again. Instead of the highlights spreading into the shadows and creating a 'glow', the shadows spread into the highlights and make for a murkier, more sombre picture. From this you can tell that yes, it's quite a well known technique.

As for the spot filter, no, it couldn't. The spot is far too big to use on the vast majority of enlarger lenses, even if you could work out how to secure the filter under the lens.

Cheers,

R.

Thanks!

You don't happen to have an example of this effect lying around? I'll definitely try it out when I get access to a dark room again!

 

[Roger Hicks]

Thanks!

You don't happen to have an example of this effect lying around? I'll definitely try it out when I get access to a dark room again!

No, sorry. It's not something I've done for decades -- since before you were born! The classic trick is to use a dark, thin, loose fabric stretched across the front of the lens: black gauze, or some form of very fine netting or scrim. It needs to be dark or contrast goes through the floor.

Cheers,

R.

 

[ibcrewin]

I took a class in portraiture and the teacher said you can use a stocking to soften a portrait. You know the sample socks/stocking things shoe depts have? Those are perfect.

 

[Roger Hicks]

I took a class in portraiture and the teacher said you can use a stocking to soften a portrait. You know the sample socks/stocking things shoe depts have? Those are perfect.

Have you actually tried it? It's more difficult to find the right stockings than you might think.

Cheers,

R.

 

[goamules]

Soft focus as a movement was very strong with the Pictorialists of the 1890s to 1920 or so. Back then, there were two classes of lenses for the effect; soft focus like the Cooke portrait lenses, which has a mild soft affect, and what I call pictorial lenses like the Struss. These could be very soft, to fit the goals of those photographers (composition over details).

But remember, this was all before the first 35mm Leica. Large format photographers continued to do soft, mostly for portraits, until the 50s. But it never seemed to fit the amateur then professional 35mm film shooters.

It's ironic, we try to get absolute sharpness out of a postage stamp sized negative, but take a huge, detail-packed 8x10 negative and want it soft! Suffice it to say, the LF soft world is very popular, and the original lenses sell for a lot of money. And none of the tricks of smearing junk on a lens, nor photoshop, can give the same look. Just as people think they can recognize a "leica glow" or "sonnar look", you can tell a LF print (harder on the internet) taken with a classic lens versus something someone has altered to try to replicate the look. Here is a 8x10 of my daughters:

 

[daveleo]

Have any of you guys actually ever walked into a ladies shop and asked for black fishnet stockings?

I have but they didn't have my size. 😛


(that was a little joke - please no PM's !)

 

[goamules]

There were few 35mm soft focus lenses, because again, small camera shooters didn't usually want the effect. But Karl Struss went on to become famous for his soft focus work (and lenses) in Hollywood in 35mm cinema. There were a few other lenses, but you don't see them much, if ever.

I have read that gauze was used in Hollywood over the lens quite a bit. In my experience (I have used most of the classic SF lenses) the best soft focus comes from a lens carefully ground to allow a lot of spherical and even chromatic aberrations. That way you get a sharp image, underneath a glowing soft one. You can use altered meniscus lenses to get great SF effects, but they will also have other, unwanted distortions.

Check out some of Jim Galli's soft lens comparisons, like here: http://tonopahpictures.0catch.com/Apricot_Blossums/Apricot_Blossums.html