What is the Softness of the Lens ?
(Photo above is a sample of “Lens Vibration” with Tamron 70~300mm lens)
A man who was amazed of me pursuing the softness of the image,
asked me what’s such a fuss all about ? —– I asked him what lens
has he been using ?
He said, such as 24~70, 70~200 both F4, and used to have 10~20mm as
well. And his understanding of the softness was “degrading halation”
of the lens, hence when he need such effect, he use vaseline on a filter
(to degrade the sharp image). (= Obviously He had no chance to learn
the Softness by himself.)
Then, I asked, has he ever heard the softness of the Zeiss 85mm F1.4
lens. —– He said that he had heard about it but never used that
lens or seen the image consciously.
[]
Not only this guy but many people misunderstood that the Bokeh is
just a halation — which was utterly wrong.—– So, I promised him
to show the sample photo of the Zeiss 85mm F1.4 lens and its typical
soft image. Sound funny though, a lots of people heard the legend of
that 85mm lens but very few of them actually seen the demonstration
photo of its softness.
—– Why bother with soft images ? = Zoologist Desmond Morris (famous with his book “Naked Ape” “Man watching” ) pointed out the matter in his book “Woman watching” that when we adore the thing or the person, our eye’s pupil wide open = making the image fuzzy. May be that is the image what we most wanted. And that was why Artistic Images are often fuzzy, like the oil paintings or even abstract. = Clear sharp image is for practical / prosaic use.
This phenomenon must explain the crucial point in what is the Art. —– With an idiosyncratic view, you may think that the fuzzy image is poorer as an information media. But it is too superficial. = fuzzy image may seemed to have less amount of the information “Bit” though when it projected into our brain, it stimulates and induces far more information. Because fuzzy image is not as specific and precise, it would overlap and related to many more images or bague memories. In another word, fuzzy image is far more rich.
This sample image here was taken by the very Zeiss 85mm Planar F1.4 lens
and its part-enlargement.
This rather prominent Bokeh is the legendary softness of the lens.
(Without this, I didn’t buy this lens and changed camera from Nikon
to Contax and it was a start of my 30 odd years long affair with
soft image.)
And this is a sample image of Zeiss 55mm F1.4. The Bokeh is slightly
less still, the image has the same characteristic of the Zeiss lens.
(Sharp still Soft) 🙂
If you think that all the 85mm lens has more or less the same character,
as the size of the minimum circle of confusion is the same, hence
theoretical depth-of-field is the same, then have a look this
AF Nikkor 85mm F1.8. — This lens shows very little Bokeh of the
Spherical Aberration, still showed slight Chromatic Aberration.
(faint blue lines on the edge)
How about the latest designed lens, Canon EFS 18~55mm IS-II.
(this photo, at 55mm) Image quality is good but it has a Chromatic
aberration — blue lines on the edge.
And this was done by 10 times more expensive lens, EF 24~70mm F2.8
(at 70mm) It’s got to be very sharp = and no softness at all
= prosaically dry image !
In contrast, this 100-year-old Anastigmat 75 mm F5.4 lens shows
not-sharp at all image, yet “somewhat” common with Zeiss lens
= wet, but not necessary soft, just too much halation of fungi.
If you think that the softness could be just added by the digital
manipulation ? Well, those samples were made by so-called “Soft
focus effect” of the Picasa 3.
(This one has the sharp center right of the flower) = as digital effect
doesn’t know 3D depth of the subject, its Bokeh doesn’t follow the
distance but gave a halo in gradually intensifying circle = looks
too unnatural and messy.
And this one was made without the center = everywhere is evenly
fuzzy = looks no different from a low resolution security-camera.
Soft image is not the same to low resolution fuzzy image nor just out
of focus Bokeh = it needs to have a sharp core image together with
slightly dispositioned (not sharply converging) light which creates wet
softness. (Good soft image looks as if it is a mesmerizing moistened
skin = wet !) Look the afore sample photos again. Why Zeiss lenses
has Bokeh while Nikon 85mm (even though it was F1.8 not F1.4) has
not at all. That was why the Carl Zeiss 85mm F1.4 lens keeps its
legendary reputation.
(and I’ve been working hard to simulate its softness by different means.)
—– Convinced ?
[]
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