Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/12/02
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>Today if I have to do something like this I use a softar or blacknet filter >during part of the exposure, does basically the same thing the cellophane >did for free, only now you spend a fortune for the damn filter. :) Try 1/3 to 1/2 the exposure (when printing) with the filter or cellophane and the rest of the exposure without. You will have to raise the contrast (I'm talking black & white) a bit to make up for what the filter does, but what happens is you lose surface detail without losing edge sharpness. I have a filter swing arm mounted under the enlarger lens holding an old Nikkor diffusion filter. Used alone, the filter is way too strong. We used to only filter portraits of women, but now we filter all portraits this way to be consistent. This same technique can be used in Photoshop. Duplicate the image into another layer, diffuse (filter) the new layer, and adjust the opacity of that layer to let some of the sharper layer beneath come through. If you have to filter with the camera, the Zeiss softar is the best I've found. The #1 is plenty strong enough. This filter does basically the same thing as the process described above. It lets some light pass unaffected and the little magic bubbles diffuse the rest of the light. These filters can be had in many sizes from B+W. They aren't cheap. If you try to soften by defocusing, you end up with an out of focus image. JZ