Soft focus

In photography, soft focus occurs when a camera lens forms images that are blurred due to uncorrected spherical aberration. A soft focus lens deliberately introduces spherical aberration which blurs fine texture in the image while retaining sharp edges across areas of high contrast; it is not the same as an out-of-focus image, and the effect cannot be achieved simply by defocusing a sharp lens. Soft focus is also the name of the style of photograph produced by such a lens.

Photography Effect Soft focus has been described as "an image that is in focus but has a halo of out-of-focus images around it." The first deliberate use of undercorrected spherical aberration, resulting in halos around highlights (also known as "pearly" highlights), is thought to have been by French pictorialists around 1900, spreading to the United States, where these lenses were most popular between 1910 and 1930. Noted practitioners of soft focus photography include Julia Margaret Cameron, Bob Guccione, and early Edward Weston, though Weston was later credited with moving photography away from soft focus pictorialism.

The soft focus effect is used primarily in glamour photography, because it eliminates blemishes. In general, soft focus photography produces a misty, dream-like image, sometimes characterized as romantic.

Technique Special focusing techniques may be required to use a soft focus lens. For example, a front-focusing technique was suggested for the Kodak Portrait, in which the point of focus was placed closer to the camera than the actual subject. Unlike typical camera lenses, which have a generally symmetric depth of field characteristic extending both in front of and behind the point of focus, the uncorrected spherical aberration results in a depth of field which extends past (behind) the point of focus, but not in front.

Physically, the effect of a soft focus lens may be approximated by the use of diffusion filter or other method, such as stretching a nylon stocking over the front of the lens, or smearing petroleum jelly on a clear filter or on the front element or even the back element of the lens itself. The latter is less recommended because successive cleaning always introduces a risk to damage the lens's surface.

It can also be approximated with post-processing procedures, either during photographic printing or through digital manipulation. Specifically, highlights in an image are blurred, but the bokeh effects of soft focus cannot be reproduced.

Design

Because soft focus results from what are considered technical flaws, typically spherical and chromatic aberration, many older lenses had soft focus built in as a side effect of their construction. For example, the two-element cemented meniscus lens fitted to early Vest Pocket Kodak cameras had a dish-shaped hood which controlled spherical aberration by reducing the effective aperture to ; when the hood is removed, the resulting uncorrected images have a strong soft focus effect. After this modification, the lens enjoyed significant popularity in Japan during the 1970s, remounted to modern cameras. Photographers called this lens the , referring to the camera's name and single-group lens construction, and the technique was championed by several Japanese photographers, including Shōji Ueda. The basic design of this lens was revived in 2016 as the Yasuhara MOMO 100.

Some lenses designed and sold during the heyday of soft focus lenses (), including the Pinkham & Smith Visual Quality series and Busch Nicola Perscheid, were designed intentionally to take advantage of these flaws. As color films became available, well-managed spherical aberration became more desirable than chromatic aberration.

Newer lenses are optimized to minimize optical aberrations, but starting from the 1970s, manufacturers began releasing specialized contemporary lenses which are designed with adjustable levels of spherical aberration at wide apertures. The effect can be disabled entirely as well, in which case the lens is sharp. These modern soft focus lenses and their effect on the images should be considered distinct from the effect of lenses designed to render smooth using an apodization filter, such as the Minolta STF 135mm T4.5.

As described in U.S. Patent 4,124,276, realized as the Minolta Varisoft Rokkor, a modern example with variable spherical aberration is a six-element, five-group lens which can be divided into three composite lens groups, marked A-I, A-II, and B. The first four elements (A-I, closest to the object being photographed) are moved as a unit to focus the lens, increasing the meniscus-shaped air gap between A-I and A-II as the lens is focused closer. The air gap distance between A-II and B is used to control spherical aberration; spherical aberration increases as the distance between A-II and B grows. In the patent summary, the inventors noted the object side lens group (A-I) was a Tessar design, although they added that any suitable lens would do, such as a Cooke triplet or Double Gauss lens; the preferred embodiment uses two meniscus lenses on the image side to control spherical aberration.

As an alternative to variable element spacing, some soft focus lenses such as the Rodenstock Imagon use interchangeable sieve aperture "grid" or "diffusion" discs which have a perforated annular shape to control the balance of light recorded between the relatively well-corrected center of the lens and the uncorrected periphery. As light from the periphery is restricted, the soft focus effect becomes less pronounced. Effective aperture values (for computing exposure) range from to .

Examples Some examples of soft focus lenses, including modern (after 1950) lenses with controllable amounts of spherical aberration, include: +Selected soft focus lenses colspan=3 FL (mm) Ap. Intro. Min. focus Const. Dimensions Method Notes / Refs. Mfr. Name Mount(s) Ele Grp Φ×L Wgt. Filter (mm) Canon New FD 85mm Soft Focus FD 85 1983 6 4 58 V Sliding soft focus control Canon EF 135mm Soft Focus EF 135 1987 7 6 52 V Fujifilm EBC Fujinon-SF 85mm M42 85 4 4 49 CS Fujifilm GX(M) SF 190mm GX680 190 1988 3 3 82 CS Discontinued 2011 Fujifilm Fujinon-SF #1 180 rowspan=3 varies 3 3 46 CS #2/#3 250 67 barrel 420 82 Kenko MC Soft 35mm F:4 T2 35 52 C Kenko べスタンSoft 45mm F:4.5 "P" 45 1995 2 1 52 C Kenko MC Soft 85mm F:2.5 "P" 85 1987 3 3 52 C Kiyohara Soft VK50R (multiple) 50 1987 2 1 40.5 C Designed by Takano Eiichi. Kiyohara Soft VK70R (multiple) 70 1986 2 1 49 C Designed by Eiichi Sakurai. Lensbaby Soft Focus Optic (multiple) 50 2009 2 1 S 3 magnetic sieve aperture discs, and overall. Lensbaby Soft Focus II (multiple) 50 2022 2 1 46 CS Internal diaphragm + magnetic sieve apertures Lensbaby Trio 28 ("Velvet" lens) (multiple) 28 2016 3 2 46 C Three effects in one lens body: "Twist" (swirly bokeh), "Velvet" (soft focus), and "Sweet" (limited focus) Lensbaby Velvet 28 (multiple) 28 2020 8 7 67 C Lensbaby Velvet 56 (multiple) 56 2015 4 3 62 C Lensbaby Velvet 85 (multiple) 85 2017 4 3 67 C Mamiya-Sekor SF C M645 145 7 5 77 V Mamiya-Sekor SF C RB67 150 5 3 77 S Mamiya-Sekor Soft M D/L RZ67 180 6 4 77 S Minolta Varisoft Rokkor 85mm SR/ MC/ MD 85 1978 6 5 55 V Minolta AF 100mm SOFT FOCUS A/α 100 1994 7 7 55 V Nikon NF 90 1995 2 1 52 W Included in Amusing Lenses (1995) / Fun Fun LensSet (2000) Pentax SMC FA PK(AF) 28 5 5 49 C Pentax SMC Soft PK(A) 85 2 1 49 C Pentax SMC F Soft PK(AF) 85 5 4 52 C Pentax SMC FA Soft PK(AF) Pentax SMC 67 Soft P67 120 4 3 77 C Rodenstock Imagon #3 (typ. Φ=65.3 mm) 200 H 5.8–11.5 1926 varies 2 1 55 (slip-on) S Most commonly found in 200, 250, or 300mm, but 170, 360, 420, and 480mm exist. 250 #3 or #4 300 55 or 78 (slip-on) Sima Soft+Macro T 100 1982 1 1 W Includes Waterhouse stops for and and 4×ND filter for exposure and creative control; focuses by pushing or pulling the lens. Spiratone Portragon T 100 1976 1 1 Helicoid focus, fixed aperture Tamron SP 70–150mm Soft (multiple) 70–150 1979 14 10 62 V Only known soft focus zoom lens. Yasuhara MoMo 100 EF, NF 43 2016 2 2 37 C Two versions, designed to approximate a "normal" focal length for both full-frame and cropped sensors. E/NEX, FX, μ43 28 Notes

Kodak Portrait (4×5+) Leica Thambar 90mm (M39) Petzval portrait (4×5+) Seibold Dreamagon 90mm Wollensak Veritar (4×5+)

Thambar

In 1935, Leitz released a soft-focus lens, the Thambar 90mm , for the Leica rangefinder cameras. It was supplied with a special filter to block light through the center of the lens, resulting in the image being formed by relatively uncorrected aberrations through the periphery.The legendary Leitz Thambar and its modern renaissance It was made in small numbers, no more than 3000 units, and is a rare collector's item today.

Soft focus

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