I'm chasing pixies again. Or still. Or some little "corner case" like that.
The topic of soft focus photography on small formats is interesting to me. I'd like to reliably replicate the "look" and "feel" of Photo Secessionist/Pictorialist era prints in digital. This means looking for a way to get "just the right amount of softness" in an image using digital sensors.
Sony A7RII
Ricoh Riconar 55mm f/2.2 @f/2.8
All of the made for purpose adaptable to digital 35mm SLR Soft Focus lenses I've looked give results that are too "strong." That is, the level of veiling "softness" (spherical aberration) does not stand up to looking at an image at "normal" viewing distances.
I'm convinced that soft focus lenses from the late 1800's/early 1900's "work" because they were made by contact printing and lens designers could allow "just the right amount" of optical imperfections to be pleasing to viewers. 4x5 inch. 5x7 inch. Whole plate. 8x10 inch. Any attempt to enlarge a negative made with a special purpose soft focus lens meets with disaster. So contact printing it was. Period.
Adaptable 35mm/Full Frame Soft Focus lenses to my way of thinking fail where large format film lenses could succeed. Fujifilm 85mm f/4 SF. Pentax 85mm f/2.2 and f/2.8. Minolta 85mm f/4 Varisoft. Canon 135mm SF. These lenses are nearly impossible to work with if trying to come close to what the original Pictorialists were able to create.
Though, it must be said, I have it on good PhD thesis-level on this topic authority that Pictorialists in the 1970's and 1980's were able to successfully use the Minolta Varisoft with the softness ring set between "0" and "1" (ie: very very gentle application of spherical aberration). The photographer had to know what they were doing.
Looking at pixies, odd pieces of fluff, and photographic lens histories I found that something potentially useful. Wollensak's Velostigmat Series II tessar formula is a normally sharp lens that came with soft focus capability. The soft focus effect is achieved by unscrewing the first element moving it away from the two optical groups placed on either side of the aperture. By extending the distance between the first and second element a pleasing soft focus effect is achievable.
This got me to thinking. Perhaps pixies do exist, in spite of the lack of empirical evidence.
What if I took a cheap Soviet tessar and extended the distance between the first and second elements? Would the soft focus effect seen in large format film photography be achievable in smaller formats? Perhaps even in some controllable or easily understood manner?
Being occupied with the Rigors of Retirement, time passed and I casually let the subject rest.
One day I was thumbing through a Pentax on-line forum and discovered that the Ricoh 55mm f/2.2 Riconar is a first element focuser. It's not a tessar, nor a Cooke triplet. It's a four element air space design of some kind, of which I've never seen the likes of before. So I thought I'd give it a try as they are nicely inexpensive. What a strange and interesting lens the Ricoh turned out to be.
I then learned the Germans made a LOT of Cooke triplet first element focusing lenses... because they were cheap... because they are easy to manufacture... and because they were (barely?) sufficient to the task. The first element has, in concept, enough power to control but not contain many of the optical imperfections down stream.
Enter a Steinheil Auto-Cassaron 50mm f/2.8 Cooke triplet. Such a beautiful lens. Oh my. My many thanks to Bonzo Din or turning me onto this one.
Enter an ISCO Iscotar 50mm f/2.8 Cooke triplet. Such a gorgeous lens. Oh boy.
Avoiding the Meyer Domiplan 50mm f/2.8. Been there. Done that. Soap bubble ain't my thang.
Making a habit of avoiding cheap lenses all my life colored my sense of what is possible. Cheap lenses are bad lenses, right? The trick question is in which ways is a lens "bad?" Mike Johnson from Darkroom Magazine/The Online Photographer said something to the effect that all lenses have their gifts. And so it is with first element focusing triplets and quadruplets. I've found they can provide a controllable sense of softness, particularly for subjects nearer to the camera than not. There live the pixies I've been searching for.
Status: Here's what I've experienced using these lenses thus far.
Ricoh 55mm f/2.2 Riconar - Optical imperfections galore - the kinds of imperfections vary depending on subject distance. Decent contrast. Interesting highlight "glow" effects. Controllable by aperture and subject distance. f/11 can make a fairly sharp image of distant subjects. Between f/2.2 and f/5.6 the optical imperfections at all distances can play well toward generating a decent "Pictorialist" style enlarged to "normal" viewing size/distance.
Steinheil Auto-Cassaron 50mm f/2.8 - Subtle optical imperfections, spherical aberration at all apertures and all subject distances. Low contrast. Using the "haze" removal control during processing cleans up a scene, but why use it if I'm looking for "soft focus?"
This lens is like using a Heliar large format lens from Voigtlander. Back in the day I owned two of these, a 15cm and 21cm f/4.5, both in Compound shutter. These lenses had similar underlying detail to what I see with the 50mm. Missing the rendering of those old lenses I'm happy to discover the Steinheil.
As the Auto-Cassaron is stopped down the underlying detail begins to extend toward the edges of the field. The effect is really interesting to see. It's as if the lens designers kept the spherical aberration to gain consistency in other areas of optical design, such as resolution, field distortion, chromatic aberration and coma. The Steinheil obviously makes for a decent "Pictorialist" style lens for small formats, though of a different characteristics compared to the Ricoh.
ISOC Iscotar 50mm f/2.8 - Optical imperfects somewhere between the Ricoh and Steinheil. Good contrast. Interesting highlight "glow" effects. Controllable, as with the Ricoh, by aperture and subject distance. f/8 and f/11 can make a decently sharp image at greater subject distances if needed. Between f/2.8 and f/4.5 the optical imperfections can play well toward generating a decent "Pictorialist" style enlarged to "normal" viewing size/distance. I think of the ISCO as a slightly more rational German Riconar.
Are there more German first element focusing triplets in my future? Stay tuned.
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