Plane of Sharp Focus

     My guess would be that many older portraits were taken with
special soft focus portrait lenses..... These lenses are usually large
aperture ( f :3.5 to f:4.5 ) and were shot using almost full aperture to be
able to achieve the spherical and chromatic aberrations ......
The smaller the aperture the sharper the image became...... The
photographer may have tried to control the sharpness fall off by using
depth of field both by aperture and position of the camera.... I would love
to study these photographs as this has basically become a lost art and is
now in a bit of a revival.......Most of the master photographers that used
these old specialized lenses have died and took their techniques to the
grave with them.......
        This softness and sharpness fall off can not be achieved by just
putting a soft focus filter on a lens.... These images had a clarity to them
maintaining the body of the image but also had soft flares in the
highlights...... The effect is beautiful...... I recently purchases several
old and very rare Soft Focus lenses and am really looking forward to
experimenting with them......... I think the effect lends itself to Alt
photography.....
Tip: There is not a woman alive that wants her portrait taken with a normal
lens!....
Merry Christmas,
John Cremati
Received on Sun Dec 25 10:48:13 2005