Image was shot with half of a petzval type projection lens that had major baslam separation on it (almost completely yellow). The yellow in the balsam diffused the image greatly (tough to focus on the ground glass), and also significantly reduced the contrast in the negative. Most people would have thrown the lens away long ago because it looks so bad, but I could never bring myself to do that.
The lens gives an image such that the sharpest focus is in the center 1/4 of the image and it gets progressively soft as you go towards the corners. When I use it, I need to make sure that the part of the image I want in sharpest focus is in the center of the ground glass - didn't do it on this photo (my mistake). The other image has her face lower in the image and it worked better.Re-cement the lens - why would I want to do that? Then it would look like several other lenses I already have. As it is, because of it's imperfections, I have a lens that is different from everything else I have. Besides, the lens isn't worth much anyway (it's a no-name petzval).