Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 6:02 pm Post subject: New Project: Home made "real" soft focus lens?? |
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Ballu wrote:
I am planning to put some time of lens opening/breaking to making soft focus lens.
Yes, there are some old (vest pocket kodak) VPK Meniscus Achromat Lenses, whcih can be used as soft focus lens. I have just made the assembly of lens with broken 135mm f2.8 lens.
(taking a 2-element, single group lens out of VPK front assembly and fixed the lens only to the back element position.. I got the M42 mount lens as well as a real, huge hood)
Now, my next target is to convert some lens to soft focus lens with putting a metallic ring in-between the lens element for optical aberration.
I am thinking on these lines,
1) Planning to use Enlarger lens Graphic Raptar Wollensak 161mm f/4.5. Why???:
- Comparatively fast lens for focal length.
- Not a bad focal length for portrait purposes, although, I would have love something around 100-135mm.
- Huge lens and very simple design. Can be easily open. There is lot of space between front elements and back elements (was key requirement for me).
- Sharp wide open.
- Shallow DoF (nice for portrait purposes).
- Have mounted the lens on broken Nikon lens, so I have this lens with Nikon mount.
2) Planning to get either thin metal sheet or plastic sheet.
- Cut to the size of internal diameter of lens assembly. Th aim is to put this piece of sheet in between the front and back element of lens.
- Drill/Get a bigger hole at the center of this sheet, so that the central part of frame will be sharp (max) or say with minimal optical aberration.
- Drill the smaller holes, all round the side of central big one. The radius ratio between these 2 holes may be of 1:4. These holes will create the softness along the corners of the frame, as well as some hallo effect at the center.
- Place this sheet in between the 2 lens elements.
Now, My questions to forum members,
1) Has any one did this before.
2) What else can be done to get the high quality soft lens.
And why I am doing this,
There are lot of soft lenses available. But all are optimized for full frame, medium format and larger format. Using any of these on crop camera will be killing the real effect. The high optical aberration impact area will not be part of crop camera frame.
It will take a week or 2, to complete this... will keep the people updated... _________________ -Ballu
http://balyanpage.blogspot.com/ |