after the morning rain

African Daisy. Soft focus image(s) sepia toned.

Klaus,

Welcome to our photography community. Your arrival is a particular pleasure for me personally as I have a strong admiration for early lens makers devoted to not only giving us sharp planes of focus but also learning how to ameliorate the harshness. I simply love some of the older soft focus lenses. This is, to me, the antidote to those who strive for edge to edge evenness of every optical characteristic with the end result of a lens with no emotions and little character.

So it's a special joy to see as you first contribution these two B&W images!




The second image is preferable to me, but I do admit to liking the first so understated soft image.

I'd be interested to see the second image cropped on the left to almost completely remove the leaf on the lower left and then remove a tad, perhaps a 1/4 inch from the top to give the elements a stronger impact, perhaps.

I'd love to know how you made them! Meanwhile, I just an happy!

Asher

Welcome to the forum, Klaus. I love shooting flowers too.

Thanks a lot for the warm welcome!

Me too, I am into older lenses and especially soft focus ones. I also construct m own ones, if I can't find what I need (want).
These were actually done using a approx. f=120mm quartz triplet lens with a circular very round multi-blade aperture
attached to it, that whole contraption then mounted onto a focusing helicoid onto my DSLR.




I have a few older and modern SF lenses, so be assured to see soon more using them...

Klaus,

I like the crop! What is the difference between the first and second images? What did you set differently?

Asher

The sharpness/softness can be controlled by stepping down, this is
simply what I used.