Home made Lenses ( soft focus )

Examples of Tom Ferguson photos:
http://www.ferguson-photo-design.com

Hi Tom,
        Wow! Your depth of field on those photos is almost nothing! Plus
you have center focus and then it fades to the edges....... I think you got
real lucky on that lens..... Is the effect controllable? Is this chemical
focus or is it mechanical?
       I bought a book published by Jay Allen called" Pictorial Soft-Focus
and Portrait Lenses from the Past" ... He has been researching Soft focus
Lenses since the 1980's when he found out that almost everyone that knew of
them extensively had died......... In his book he lists the different makers
of such lenses and the model and series number of their SF models.... Most
importantly he lists the coverage of the lenses ( It is hard to believe that
many of the 14 inch SF lenses do not even cover 5x7 as they commonly have
a very low angle of view) All most all of his information came from the
manufacturers catalogs and pamphlets.......
      He talks on the correct use of the lenses which do not operate as
conventional lenses for the most part.....The differences in the use of
chemical focus and mechanical focus for starters......

What little I know has come from his book ( 50 pages Xerox copy bound
together) ...I have been making steady progress........
John Cremati
Received on Fri Mar 4 13:01:01 2005