Screen shot by Soft lens (2)

I found this pretty image in the net.  The original was much sharper, rather normal picture.  When I took screen copy using my homemade Mag lens, in order to avoid a moire, I gave a bit of off-focus.  It was a character of the Mag Lens, when it was off focused, the image suddenly increases the aberration thus, the image become nice soft picture.

This image was not as much as off focused like the first picture. (Just enough not to see the screen pixel, hence neither moire)

Then give a bit more off-focus.  —– Isn’t this picture looks more sexy ?  (Shame, I was not the photographer to see the lotus flower in the first place)

I think, now you were convinced to appreciate soft image !

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How about a Glittering Gaudy Lens ?

Do you know, this is called “Kawaii” in the Japanese norm today.

Settle with flowers to create Kawaii image was rather casual approach though,

otherwise — kitten’s picture if not small child or young girl.

— But these days, to deal with child or young girl, the risque is too high.

So, I would rather choose a camera. —– best of all, it’s cost virtually nothing.

Here, it was a 30 years old Olympus film camera.    The camera of that

age is much easier to disassemble and to utilize its mechanism.

 The camera then had auto-winding-up, rewind (Photo above left = the 

train of gears on the bottom of the body convey the power of the motor in

the winding-up spool to the rewinding fork), auto-focus, collapsible lens

etc, very useful mechanism though, “fully auto” then did not necessary 

had everything. = The exposure control was done by one mechanism = 

= two L-shaped blades worked as a Shutter and an Iris same time.

(Photo above, right)   Under the bright light, the blades open very little  

and close quick = worked as high speed shutter with small F-aperture.

And when it was dark, blades will fully open and close after a while, 

so in any condition, it gave a combination of somewhere between.

(Though, such mechanism is not useful anywhere else.)

What I found useful was their zoom lens barrel.  I removed all the lens

and the mechanism then I put a single meniscus lens. (So that the zoom

barrel became a focusing helicoid for the lens which can give the focus

from infinity to 1/2 close up.)  This lens has about 60mm focal length

and the diameter of 35mm = effectively F1.8.

The lens had no coating and such single lens has a lots of aberrations and

the halation of which I’m after and this lens got glittering gold encoder.

— isn’t it gorgeous or bad taste ?  😀       ( I didn’t put — it was there.)

Incidentally, this lens showed this character (and see the difference)

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Play with Lens

 So far I made quite few lenses to obtain soft-focus or wide-angle pinhole etc,

mostly by utilizing single lens. (still, some of them seemed to be an achromatic

compound lens)  Single lens has inherent aberrations which produces soft image.

Furthermore, I’ve experimented soft images with focus shift or even with camera

shake/vibration using aberration corrected normal lenses. Though, those approaches 

were hardly called technique but more like an opportunist seeking a good luck, since 

the success rate was rather low = lots of try and only few will show the good results. 

That’s because, when the focus ring was rotated while camera’s shutter was open,   

the resulting shake gives devastating effect than a soft nice blur.

= make smooth focus shift while camera was held steadily. = That’s what I need. 

Inside of the Canon G9 compact camera, I found pretty useful mechanism.  

(1) A motor moves the lens.  (2) Small stepping motor shifts a lens for focus.

—– though, those two mechanisms were constructed on the same plastic piece.

(Photo above, left) = I needed to cut and separate its center mechanism out of the

lim with DC motor.  (second photo shows the separated piece = the lim which can

drive a cogged barrel — in the second photo top, the lens was placed in the barrel)  

Photo 3rd and 4th showed the center mechanism — the lens was pushed out most

and pulled inward most by its stepping motor.

The photo above, left is the cogged barrel = when it was rotated by the motor,

the barrel, hence the lens will be extended(= Pushed out) (photo center)  

When motor rotate opposite direction = lens was pulled in. (photo right)

Those function is exactly what I need for a smooth Focus-shift.

 In order to have an experiment to get a soft focus by the focus-shift ( by a normal

lens, not by the aberration) I took the lens unit out of a Canon 50mm FD lens.  

(Photographic equivalent of gouging the eye !)

( a disc shaped mechanism on the right is the Iris — very useful device )

The lens unit which I’ve put inside of the plastic barrel, in the photo before was this

Canon 50mm F1.8 Lens.  —– though, on the test, I found that this Canon 50mm FD

lens can’t give an infinity focus on Canon EOS = only usable closer than few meters.

(otherwise, the EOS’s mirror will hit the lens bottom.  😦  )

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Then, give a thought, what all those hustle for ?

—– Why not just modify a Canon EF 50mm for EOS = 

put an extra electronic connection to override their AF motor !

(Ideally, huck into the Canon camera’s OS and reprogram it to give a focus-shift while

shutter is open = was the best though, not only the risk to destroy the camera but also,

the Canon doesn’t like it at all. ) 

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Fuji Soft-Focus Lens

While looking for a Pentax 20 mm lens to use for Macro shot (use it with revers mount-ring

on Canon —– Canon’s 20 mm lens is too big and F-aperture couldn’t be set manually),

Then I bumped to 40 year old  Fuji Soft-focus 85 mm F4 lens, deep inside of camera cabinet.

Yah, yah, I’m still having this ! —– I remember, I used this lens twice = It is my bad habit to

buy strange Camera, Lens, funny devices whether I need to use it or not = still, to see how

it was designed or what sort of things could be created from such junk is,  I should say,

my pleasure. —– (Like £10 broken camera, it is a treasure box of spare-parts)

Any how, to test this lens, I popped out to take picture of  Chery Blossoms. (Yet again  😀 )

Most Soft focus Lens is using an optical aberration = Uncorrected Spherical Aberration, 

which cause the light spread out side of the image, hence giving soft halo around the image

while maintaining the sharply focused core image in the center.  (Though, having inherent

soft image in the view finder, to have sharp focus in the first place is not easy  😀 )

And as this Fuji Lens is using so-called Lotus-Root Iris (having lots of hole in a disc) to

control intensity of the effect, some time the artifact appears in the off-focused Boke image. 

In the photo above, you can see the ghost of multi-hole disc. = this is a sample of dirty Boke.

When soft effect works well, effect is far better than soft filter or grease, as the image has

solid core of focused image.   (With soft filter, everything become soft).

With darker background,  you can see how halo spread around the bright images.

Though, with low contrast subjects, the effect is subdued.  In fact, with smaller F setting,

the effect of aberration become very little, same as even a cheap bad lens can give sharp

image with small F-aperture setting.

These days,  even a Mob’Phone camera can take pretty sharp photos.   Sharp images with

over Photoshoped photos are everywhere, and I’ve got rather weary with them.

Our eyes are not necessary need to see everything in its details. That is why, when sharp-eyed

Photographer showed unknown view or fresh viewing angle, the image surprises us.

So, I found, soft images which shows [the details as if no details are there],  isn’t too bad.  😀

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