Two things have happened since last time I wrote here. Winter is here, it actually looks like we are getting a white Christmas, not very common these days. Not here, anyway. Even more exciting is that I have now the soft focus glass for the Lensbaby in my hands. I have tried it out for two days and I must say it’s a pretty difficult lens to use in situations where there are spot light sources. What happens is that you get a flower of flare around each light source. These images gets the look of a Marc Chagall painting or something similar, which is not quite what I seek for. But, when this can be avoided, the glass performs wonderfully poor. Some examples, more to come over the coming days:
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#1 is a really great winter shot (the other two are not at all bad, it’s just that #1 really resonates with some of my winter feelings). Colors, the silhouette, the outshining headlights and the perfect snowy bike in the background – very well composed and perfectly exposed!
Nice! I think you’ll like the soft focus – I used mine with those recent panning shots I posted. If you also have an older Lensbaby, the ones without interchangeable optics, you can just slip the soft focus disc(s) in like a regular aperture disk and they work just fine. I found I had to try to avoid pointing it directly at a light source as much as possible, to avoid the disks appearing in the shot, as you noted – I’m still not sure if I like them or not. I think with some compositions it will suit it, but a lot of others it just gets in the way.
These images are sharp and soft at the same time, it seems. Wonderful!
” But, when this can be avoided, the glass performs wonderfully poor.” LOL! This gave me a great laugh. It was a wonderful way start the day. Interesting how we like tools that actually degrade the image. Meanwhile, manufacturers keep spending lots of research and development dollars trying to figure out ways to make lenses resolve better.
Markus, thank you very much! I’m very found of that image too.
Karen, your so right, I am already enjoying the lens a lot. I saw that the aperture discs seem to be equally sized. I wonder how the spot focus lens performs with such soft focus discs..?
Thanks, Chris! I guess you’re right in both, the image gets sharp by the aperture disc’s centre hole, and then softened by a set of other holes around the centre hole.
Paul, what you write is interesting. Better resolving lenses will not necessarily make better images, but maybe only making the flaws more distinct. I’d better stick with my 7,5 mpixel camera and lousy lenses.
Beautiful series. Please note that you can use the regular aperture disks with the Soft Focus optic and it does eliminate the visible hole pattern that you see with bright light sources. Free yourself from perfection!
Ove
I am really enjoying the new images here and on flickr, they remind me of when we used to smear a little Vaseline on a filter to get the soft-look only much better. Interesting stuff and oddly compelling I keep coming back and looking again and again. When I figure out what is going on in my head on these I’ll email you. Really good stuff you are doing here.
Thanks Ray, I really appreciate your kind words of my work. I believe this is about to take me into a new way to express myself. This visual approach seems to harmonise with my way of seeing and thinking.
And yes, do email me when it all becomes clear (I know, but the wording was unintentional first). We used to experiment with nylon stockings. Oh my, stockings and vaseline, I wonder if google search will go baserk now…
I’m happy to see you here again, Sam, I was really happy over your visit last time. Thanks for your compliments. I have tried to figure out what these regular discs makes to the images. Will they still be soft in focus or more like a regular Lensbaby? I guess I’ll have to try out all these combos during the Christmas. Lots of free time for experimenting.
I think you’re doing wonderful with this new soft focus class. I find all three photos to have a really nice feel and like Ray K. I keep coming back to look at them. I look forward to seeing more!
Thank you, Earl! I’m glad you like them this much! I have uploaded some to Flickr too, while I have not had much time thinking up and writing posts for the blog.