150F picture for Jack

[irakly]

Jack, here is a snap of my girl's face that I just took with natural light. This is about 1/5th of the P25 frame. I backfocused just a tad - an old portrait trick to smooth skin out.
contax 645, P25, ISO 200 hasselblad zeiss sonnar 2.8/150 F
Just as you said, this is not a murderously sharp optics, but that's not what would one expect from a portrait lens. What is important, however, is that areas that are SLIGHTLY OOF are so well defined that they are perceived as sharp.

 

[Jack]

For sure it makes a nice portrait lens, softish with great bokeh -- the "classic" look. My compliments on a beautiful daughter AND this beautiful image of her!

 

[irakly]

i just found my old 2/85 russian rangefinder lens and tested it against 2/90 summicron. you know... one will be amazed what sixty bucks can buy i'll post them in leica m forum in a moment. meanwhile, here is another shot from 150F, full frame and a crop.

 

[Jack]

one will be amazed what sixty bucks can buy

For sure! I recently picked up a Mamiya 145 soft focus lens for my ZD. It was one of their older 645 manual focus lenses, with an adjustable de-focus front element and is also un-coated. On soft setting zero, it is sharp with a bit of veiling flare wide open, to as sharp as a modern 150 when stopped down to f8 or more. Obviously, as you dail in stronger soft effects, the spherical aberrations compile with the veiling flare to make a very sweet, old style soft focus effect.

To get back on topic, I paid a whopping $89 for it because it had fungus -- who cared, it was a soft-focus lens! I paid my camera tech another $150 for a complete CLA, the fungus came off with nary a mark, and thus is how I obtained my "softie" portrait glass for the Mamiya

Kudos on another great image BTW!

 

[Terry]

I backfocused just a tad - an old portrait trick to smooth skin out.

Irakly - when you backfocus for the portrait how do you decide how much? Is there a trick to doing it, like getting good focus somewhere else on the face and recomposing or getting your focus on the eye and moving your body ever so slightly forward?

Thanks,
Terry

 

[irakly]

terry, the second technique is unreliable, because it is very hard to move just as much as you need. much easier is to focus on the hair about an inch or so behind a hairline. the thing is, how much of backfocusing you need really depends upon a lens. some lenses actually need front focusing for a picture to look pleasing.

 

[Terry]

terry, the second technique is unreliable, because it is very hard to move just as much as you need. much easier is to focus on the hair about an inch or so behind a hairline. the thing is, how much of backfocusing you need really depends upon a lens. some lenses actually need front focusing for a picture to look pleasing.

Thanks,
Next time I have a willing subject I am going to play around. For me a lot of those types of shots tend to get done with either my 50 pre asph lux or CV 75. Abnd then when people take pictures of me I can say "please backfocus just a tad .

 

[irakly]

your 50 lux does not require backfocusing. it has excellent plasticity.
this is it on m8, something like f/4

 

[Terry]

Thank you....

 

[irakly]

you are welcome. i dunno about 75 voigtlander, just never had laid my hands on it. is it any good?

 

[Terry]

you are welcome. i dunno about 75 voigtlander, just never had laid my hands on it. is it any good?

I like it but I am not a lens expert.

here is a link to some initial test shots

http://tbanet.zenfolio.com/p1032449580/

and here are two I've posted at dpreview