Soft
Way back in the days of yore, specially constructed soft focus lenses were often employed in portrait photography to flatter subjects and bestow an overall “painterly look” to prints. They were first used by 1800’s photographers now known as Pictorialists. Both the Pictorialists and soft lenses fell out of favour when straight photography became the dominant style, then the lenses went in and out of popularity a number of times in the decades since. They were often used for glamour photography, for instance in mid-1970’s men’s magazine pictorials. They also showed up in movie and TV work, most often for close-ups of the female leads.
A couple of years ago I bought a vintage soft-focus lens (Pentax SMC 67 Soft 120mm F3.5) to play with, and of course the first model subject I used it on was Gandalf the Russian Blue pussycat. Not that he needs flattering particularly, but the sharp/soft look is kind of cool, don’t you think?
The shot was taken in January 2016 with a medium format Pentax 645Z at 1/125th second, ISO 100. The lens was set to f:5.6.
