Anybody with experience with 120 soft for Pentax 67

[harlequin]

Curious if this lens is suitable for both sharp and soft photos or is it a "1 trick pony"
I am interested because you don't have to change disks like RB/RZ soft focus lenses

Any Feedback Experience or sample photos taken with this lens would be
greatly appreciated......I would be using it for portraits, but at 120mm that may
not be optimum focal length?

Kind Regards,

Harlequin

 

[jeroenp]

Stopping down definitely makes it sharper, but I think it requires some experimentation with a subject to see if it works for you.

I shot a roll at f/8 in a park to get a feel for the out-of-focus rendering when it's stopped down beyond the obvious soft-focus range (f/3.5 - f/5.6):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeroenpulles/albums/72157670483141471

The 120mm focal length is just long enough to prevent perspective from distorting a portrait. It's closer to a normal/standard focal length than a "real" portrait lens. You could use a 1.4 converter if you prefer a longer focal length for portraits, though. Optimum length... I'd guess most people would prefer a longer lens for portraits. But then again, most people probably won't want to use a soft-focus lens either.

I have one very nice print of a picture of my father with this lens. This is not a lens for pixel-peeping, use it for print output, I think, from my limited experience with it.

kind regards,
Jeroen

 

[choiliefan]

What is pixel-peeping?

 

[anfenglin]

The habit of manipulating pixels to make it look better on a computer and / or the habit of looking to close or taking the digital image on a computer as the ultimate rendering of an analogue picture.

 

[mtjade2007]

I have tried this lens for portrait but I never had luck in getting satisfactory pictures. With aperture below f8 my pictures were always blurry. With aperture above f8 the sharpness was much better but never was close to the sharpness of normal lenses. I suspect that it was the film scanner which always tried to autofocus the scan and resulted in the pictures not showing the correct effect of a soft focus lens.

However, have you noticed that this lens can focus really close to the object without using an extension tube? With this feature I have used it for shooting closeup pictures. I somehow found that the closeup pictures captured by this lens very unique and interesting. It blurs the background to an extreme degree other normal leses can not capture. For example I had palm trees in the background. Not only the trees were blurred the trunk of the tree was broken up and a section of it disappeared.

Here are a few photos:

By the way my camera is a Pentax 67-ii.