The second photograph is listed at edward-weston.com as being from 1927 and I believe is of Bertha in his Glendale studio, right?
I can't find reference to the camera used for that series but I had thought it was his graflex and that he enlarged negatives from it using a soft focus lens. I know that he is supposed to have used this process with his commercial portraiture during that time period. I note that the shadows seem to "glow" and that is what I would expect from such technique. Most of the talk about lighting has been about the Charis photo, does anyone know if I am mistaken with regard to the second photo?