35mm Soft Focus with a superb French Achromatic Meniscus lens. Nikon 35

I get it. Soft focus is an acquired taste. You don't need to tell me my pictures gave you a case of vertigo and you fell down. If you hate this stuff, simply move along.

But if you happen to enjoy and admire soft focus work, you will know of the challenges in getting it done with the 35mm format. Soft focus was invented about the same era as anastigmat lenses. The 8X10 portrait workers complained that the new lenses were too sharp. Every flaw showed up. And so a whole industry grew up around expensive (even then because they were made in miniscule numbers compared to the other stuff) specialized portrait lenses that had a soft glow and flattered their subjects.

But 95% of the soft lenses were made with the 8X10 film format in mind. They employed brute force on all of that real estate to get the magic onto the film.

35mm is a whole different kettle of fish, and if you've investigated, you don't find very much decent 35mm or even medium format soft focus work.

If you like what you see, I just put up 2 pages at my web site, all done with this lens. 120mm, so some problems to solve, even on 35mm. I used a Nikon EL2 and a Nikon f mount bellows with my antique lens at the end of the bellows.

Enjoy something a little different. Film was Kodak Aerial Recon Plus X long roll thin base 1998 exp.

http://tonopahpictures.0catch.com/M...ns/120mm_04-2020/35mm_soft_focus_Vendome.html