Lomography Soft Focus Effect

Soft Focus effect really is an lens flow which lens forms images that are blurred due to spherical aberration. It's not same as out of focus. In photography Soft Focus Effect used in order to give the appearance of blurring the image while retaining sharp edges. It's same for Lomography too. This one one rare time photography take advantage of  flow. But flows in Photography is which makes Lomography. There are several methods how to get Soft Focus effect.

Plum Blossom by sung ming whang

How to achieve in-camera soft focus effect 

1. Most easy method to get this effect is put something infront of your camera lens. Something like glass, piece of plastic, polythene etc. Even Shooting through nylon stocking would work.


2. There are diffusion filter which you can buy for this.These filters also known as fuzzy filters. or You can buy a UV filter and  put something like petroleum jelly.


3. There are specifically made lens for this such as Canon EF 135mm lens or Pentax SMC 28mm f2.8 FA Soft Lens. These specail lenses have adjustable levels of spherical aberration at wide apertures and if you want you can disable it too. This method is called Chromatic Aberations.


4. There is another way to achieve soft focus effect using multiple apertures. There are some professional soft focus lenes called Rodenstock Imagon which are made for this. These lenses were made  from 1931 to the 1990s in different focal lengths for small-screen , medium and large format cameras.


5. Spherical Aberration is the last method probably the most original way to achieve soft focus effect. Basically this is a flow in lens. This best way to get it is homemade lenses made from a single element or achromatic pair.

Some great Soft Focus Effect examples

buckshot @ Lomography.com

Jonespointfilm

Nao.k

Evonne

Lomography.com

You can find plenty of great soft focus photos just by searching in Google search. Cool thing about this is you can do this without spending money at all. No expensive cameras or lenses needed. Your simple Lomo camera is more than enough you can use all kind of things you can find at home to cover the lens and see how this effect works.