Soft focus

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This article is about the term used in photography and optics, for the album by the Norwegian band Euroboys, see Soft Focus.

An image of a bottle with a heavy soft focus effect.

The same image of a bottle, but with no soft focus effect at all.

Soft focus is a term used in photography and optics to describe a lens flaw. A soft focus lens deliberately introduces spherical aberration in order to give the appearance of blurring the image while retaining sharp edges; it is not the same as an out-of-focus image, and the effect cannot be achieved simply by defocusing a sharp lens. Soft focus is also the name of the style of photograph produced by such a lens.

1 Photography
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Photography

Because soft focus is a technical flaw, many older lenses had soft focus built in as a side effect of their construction. Newer lenses are optimized to minimize optical aberrations, but there are lenses such as the Canon EF 135/2.8 Softfocus^[1] which have adjustable levels of spherical aberration at wide apertures. The effect can be disabled entirely as well, in which case the lens is quite sharp.

Nikon produces a series of DC ("Defocus Control") lenses which are sometimes confused with the soft focus effect, but these are not soft focus lenses, as they do not introduce spherical aberration over the whole field.

The soft focus effect is used as an effect for glamour photography, because the effect eliminates blemishes, and in general produces a dream-like image.

The effect of a soft focus lens is sometimes approximated by the use of diffusion filter or other method, such as stretching a nylon stocking over the front of the lens, or smearing petroleum jelly on a clear filter or on the front element of the lens itself.

It can also be approximated with post-processing procedures. Specifically, highlights in an image are blurred.