RE: Soft Lenses

[Cameron Hood]

Soft focus maybe, although you get quite a different quality of 
softness from soft lenses or from the magnificent Zeiss Softtar filters 
than you do from a Gaussian blur in Photoshop (I have a Zeiss Softar 1 
and a Vivitar soft focus filter that fit all my lenses). It does not 
hit and spread the highlights as nicely as a dedicated optic does.

Shift lenses are another matter. Although you can correct perspective 
in Photoshop, that only works with very large, oversampled files, it is 
very 'lossy' (you will lose resolution), and it cannot correct if parts 
of the image are out of focus; that is, for depth of field problems. 
There are circumstances where only a shift lens or camera will work; 
for example, if you need added depth of field AND a fast shutter speed 
(high winds, wide angle fields of wildflowers with scenic view in the 
background), with a tilt and shift lens you could shoot the scene at 
f=5.6 instead of f=22, with the accompanying increased shutter speed 
and therefore, less foreground blur.

Perspective control in Photoshop is wonderful, and I use it on 
occasion, sometimes even to add distortion, but it does not replace a 
shift lens or camera, and never will IMHO.

Cameron

PS I would really like to see some new tilt-shift lenses. Canon has 
three; 24, 45, and 90mm I believe: Pentax has one, and it is shift only.

On Saturday, March 1, 2003, at 08:10  PM, 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 22:23:10 -0500
From: "J. C. O'Connell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: Soft Lenses
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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soft focus lenses as well as shift lenses are obsolete
due to photoshop IMHO.
JCO