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330
THE HASSELBLAD MANUAL
SOFT FOCUS EFFECTS
Some images, especially portraits and fashion illustrations, can be more effective with a soft
touch, which also suppresses undesirable details and reduces the need for retouching after-
ward. Only a slight diffusion is necessary for this purpose. A soft focus effect can be produced
with special soft focus lenses that used to be available for fi lm photography or with fi lters
placed in front of the regular sharp camera lenses. Using fi lters makes more sense because
they can be used on different lenses, and different fi lters can produce different degrees of
softness. A soft touch can also be produced in the computer to a sharp digital image or to a
fi lm image after it has been scanned. While computer manipulations allow you to experiment
with the type and degree of sharpness, I still like to suggest considering the Softar fi lters on
the camera lens because I feel that the Softars produce an exceptionally beautiful softness.
The Softars are made only for V system lenses.
The Softar Filters
The Softars produce the softness not by blurring the image but by producing sharp images
with diffused outlines with the highlights bleeding into the shaded areas. Good soft
focus images must not give the impression of unsharpness. Our eyes are not accustomed
to seeing blurred things. We always expect to see something sharp, whether we look at the
actual subject or a photographic image. Softar images still have the appearance of sharpness
(see Figure 17-11). The Softars also produce the same degree of softness regardless of what
lens aperture is used. This is important because you want to set the lens aperture for the
desired depth-of-fi eld, not for the degree of softness. Some fi lters made by other companies
produce a large degree of softness with the aperture wide open and an almost sharp image
when closed down as soft focus lenses do. This is an unacceptable approach for serious
photography.
With Softars you produce different degrees of softness with different fi lters: Softar #1
gives the minimum softness, my choice for most people pictures and Softar #3 the maximum
with #2 falling somewhere in between. For most pictures, especially portraits and fashion
shots, the slight softness of #1 or #2 is suffi cient.
Soft focus images can be beautiful in the fl at lighting of an overcast or foggy day or
with the lighting from studio lights. The effect can be very striking on back-lit subjects
or scenes where the diffusion fi lter creates a sort of halo effect around every highlight in
the scene or subject. Because the effect is produced by bleeding the highlights into
shaded areas, the bright areas may produce a halo that can look disturbing against a dark
background. Avoid or reduce this effect by photographing against a lighter background,
photographing from a different angle, changing the lighting setup, or changing to a weaker
soft focus fi lter.
The Softar fi lters are made from an acrylic material and should never be cleaned
with lens cleaning fl uids or other chemicals. The Hasselblad Soft fi lters in square shapes
for use in the Professional Lens Shade produce a very similar effect as the Softars. The
different degree of softness is created with different fi lters and is the same at different lens
apertures.
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