Eric Stevens wrote:
On Sat, 26 Sep 2009 12:04:07 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

Don Stauffer wrote:
Kevin McMurtrie wrote:
In article
,
eNo wrote:

Lately I've been wrestling with the question of whether I'm putting
too much emphasis on sharpening in my photos. See some of my musings
on the subject at http://esfotoclix.com/blog1/?p=702.

~~~
eNo
http://esfotoclix.com/blog1

It matters which part is sharp. That's why photographers who create
art can be so picky about lenses. Not just the perfect ones, but the
curiously flawed ones too.


This brings up the topic of portraiture. There were some lenses that
were not the sharpest that were sought after for portraiture. Not all
blurs were good, but there is a spot profile that does look good for a
portrait, that has a narrow central peak, but a lot of stuff out in
the wings.

There are lenses made specifically for portraiture that introduce a certain
amount of spherical aberration. The Lietz Thambar is probably the most
famous, but not the only one--there are such lenses in the Canon and Pentax
lines and maybe Nikon--I'm not clear on what exactly the "DC" feature on the
DC-Nikkors does.

The brochure of the time (yes, I've still got one!) says:

"AF DC-Nikkor lenses - Unique Nikkors for unique portraits.

AF DC-Nikkors feature exclusive Nikon Defocus-image
Control technology. This allows photographers to contro
the degree of spherical aberration in the foreground or
background by rotating the lens DC ring. This will create
a rounded out-of-focus blur that is ideal for portrait
photography. No other lenses in the world offer this
special technique"

A quick approximation are the softening masks made by stretching a
fabric screen in front of the lenses. The diffraction blur profile is
the proper type blur, and the nets or screens produce this type of
blur.

Another trick was smearing the front of the lens with vaseline.

Most of us stayed with doing that to a filter rather than the
front element of a lens.

Regardless, those "tricks" are no longer very useful simply
because with digital image processing it is so much easier to
accomplish with post processing. However...

It can be a fun "parlor trick"! It works well enough even if
only the camera's LCD display is available, but its much more
fun with a laptop handy so that a larger monitor can be viewed.
Take a paper napkin, tear a ragged hole roughly about half the
size of the front of your lense, and hold it over the lense
while shooting a few "head shots". A rubber band will help hold
it in place, but even hand held will work.

People will think you've had a little too much... until they see
the results.

If there are out of focus specular highlights it's also
interesting to use a pair of scissors to cut a hole with a
particular shape, such as a heart or a diamond.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)