Soft focus

In a soft-focus image, highlights are surrounded with an almost imperceptible glow that softens both contrast and fine detail—an effect quite different from out-of-focus images, or lack of sharpness resulting from camera shake. Soft focus has long been popular for portraits, especially for flattering the complexions of women who are no longer in the first flush of youth, but it has gone in and out of fashion for other subjects such as landscapes, still lifes, and flower studies.

The classical route to soft focus is via a specially computed lens, in which spherical aberration is deliberately under-corrected. The lens is used at a wide aperture, because stopping down reduces spherical aberration. The results obtainable with such lenses, especially on large-format cameras, cannot be equalled in any other way: Hollywood portraits from the 1930s are perhaps the perfect example, shot on 20.3 × 25.4 cm (8 × 10 in) film with 400 to 600 mm (16 to 24 in) lenses as fast as f/3 to f/6.

With smaller formats, or with soft-focus screens instead of purpose-made soft-focus lenses, the effects are less predictable and generally less successful. The most successful soft-focus screens, such as the Zeiss Softars, when used on a roll-film camera such as a Hasselblad, can give effects that are all but indistinguishable from true soft-focus effects on larger formats, at least in colour. Soft-focus monochrome with small cameras is the most difficult of all.

— Roger W. Hicks

Bibliography

• Hicks, R. W., and Nisperos, C., Hollywood Portraits: Classic Shots and How to Take Them (2001).
• Ullrich, W., Die Geschichte der Unschärfe (2002)

This article is about the term used in photography and optics. For the album by the band Euroboys, see Soft Focus.

An image of a bottle with a heavy soft focus effect.		An image of the same bottle, but with no soft focus effect at all.

In photography, soft focus is a lens flaw, in which the lens forms images that are blurred due to spherical aberration. A soft focus lens deliberately introduces spherical aberration in order to give the appearance of blurring the image while retaining sharp edges; 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.

Contents 1 Photography 2 See also 3 References 4 External links

Photography

Because soft focus is a technical flaw, many older lenses had soft focus built in as a side effect of their construction. Newer lenses are optimized to minimize optical aberrations, but there are lenses such as the Canon EF 135mm lens f/2.8 with Softfocus^[1] and Pentax SMC 28mm f2.8 FA Soft Lens, to name but two, which have adjustable levels of spherical aberration at wide apertures. The effect can be disabled entirely as well, in which case the lens is sharp.

Nikon produces a series of DC ("Defocus Control") lenses which are sometimes confused with the soft focus effect, but these are not soft focus lenses, as they do not introduce spherical aberration over the whole field.

The soft focus effect is used as an effect for glamour photography, because the effect eliminates blemishes, and in general produces a dream-like image.

The effect of a soft focus lens is sometimes 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 of the lens itself.

It can also be approximated with post-processing procedures. Specifically, highlights in an image are blurred.

Actor Leslie Howard shot in soft focus in Of Human Bondage.

Post-processing Soft Focus effect by using Gaussian Blur Filter in Photoshop CS3. Note the smoother skin texture result (right) compare to the original (left)

See also

• Aberration in optical systems
• Lens (optics)
• Special effect
• Bokeh
• Convolution
• low-pass filter

References

1. ^ Canon EF 135mm f/2.8 with Softfocus product page

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Soft focus

• Soft-Focus Lenses and Techniques, an overview for large format photographers
• Article on creating the soft-focus effect in Photoshop.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)