----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruce Dayton"
Subject: Re: PESO - Soft
Not bad. The effect is pretty good, but not exactly like a soft focus
lens. I have seen many attempts with PS to duplicate and have yet to
see the same thing. I suspect one issue is that when the picture is
taken, the actual depth of the image comes into play with the lens
effect. When in PS, you are really working on a 2 dimensional image
so have a difficult time simulating the depth.
I was going to comment on this earlier today, but was short of time this
morning.
I believe soft focus lenses are using uncorrected spherical abberation to
create the effects that they produce.
If you want to emulate the old portraiture style, then short depth of field
combined with spherical abberation is what is required, along with lighting
that has a fairly rapid fall off.
Gaussian blur doesn't really do it.
I've been leaving the sharpness settings on the camera at their minimum
setting, which seems to work as well as modern equipment can for classic
portraiture.
I have an old 7" Aldis Anistigmat that I bought from Dagor77 a while back.
At some point, I hope to mount it to a lens board and see what it does.
Apparently, they were the cats ass of portrait lenses in their day.
William Robb
