Re: dreamy Nikon lenses
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ryuji Suzuki" <rs@silvergrain.org>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca>
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 1:40 PM
Subject: Re: dreamy Nikon lenses
FYI, there was an interesting article describing variable
soft
focus portrait lens for Minolta 35mm camera written by
their
soft focus lens engineer several months ago on the Journal
of
the Society of Photographic Science and Engineering of
Japan
(article in Japanese, except for the figure captions, I
think).
Also, Konica Hexar AF uses a lens whose spherical
aberration
is intentionally undercorrected. It produces very nicely
"soft" image superimposed on sharp image, and with crisp
contrast, at wide open at f/2. It becomes more or less
usual
"excellent" performer at about f/3.5. Of course, due to
the
focusing error caused by the residual spherical
aberration,
rangefinder cameras and SLRs cannot afford to leave this
much
spherical, but Hexar AF calculates the focus error and
compensates in its AF algorithm. Very clever.
One thing I wish existed was a camera just like Hexar but
uses
6cm square format.
Ryuji
I have a nagging feeling that an Imagon type lens was
built to fit either the Rollei SLR or Hasselblad. I'll have
to look.
---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@ix.netcom.com
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