What is it?

The use of pictorialism is accompanied by the use of so-called noble printing methods and especially soft-drawing optics. These were often meniscus-like and very simple.

• A meniscus is a crescent-shaped fibrocartilaginous anatomical structure in humans, they are present in the knee. In photography, however, it is a simple lens made up of a single piece of glass or at most two cemented elements. Simpler is really just a pinhole camera. You can get a very basic overview for example here.

Soft-drawing optics - and how do I recognize that? To the untrained eye, for example, by considering the photo out of focus and good for the trash bin. But that would be a sad mistake and it's more complicated than that - an out of focus photo is just out of focus, the lines are blurry, the patient is dead. Whereas with soft-focus optics, it's actually a controlled optical defect of spherical aberration. The lines remain sharp, but are surrounded by a glowing halation effect creating unmistakable overexposed highlights and a typically "colonnaded" and "dreamy" effect. You won't achieve this result by simple misfocusing and the output will not be pleasing to the eye.

• You may come across the terms "soft-focus" and "pictorialist" lens. They are actually two names for the same thing, although there is a sort of general consensus that the second one have a stronger "softness" effect. However, it's hard to focus with all of them and takes years of suffering and sacrifice.
• The use of soft-focus optics was especially popular in the first days of Hollywood. Soft rendering smoothed out wrinkles and made younger beauties. From the aforementioned fact probably also stems the unfortunate opinion of some intelenctually weaker individuals denying use for anything other than portraiture. Don't be led astray - the enchanting character oozes from landscape, still life or nude just as powerfully.

Types of mechanism?

There are several ways to adjust the soft-focus (SF) effect. The most fancy one features a separate selector on the lens body (Universal Heliar, TTH Cooke, Aldis, Crown, etc.) that is independent of the aperture scale - so you are in control of everything

Popular is to control the SF strenght via the aperture scale. The more you close the aperture, the weaker the effect. The disadvantage is the impossibility of the tandem "closed aperture + strong SF" or "open aperture + weak SF." Typical examples are Eidoscope, Kodak Portrait or Nicola Perscheid.

Other lenses use the degree of screwing the front or rear element as a selector. Simply put, the more you screw out the lens, the stronger the effect you get. And if you unscrew too much, the whole thing falls out and you will shit yourself, because the common denominator of these things is not cheap purchase value. You'll find this with Velostigmats or Dallmeyers, for example (the early versions screwed in the rear member - so the bad thing is that you have to take the whole lens out of the standard when you want to change that. Newer versions have moved this to the front and the latest ones have a separate selector in the lens chassis).

Probably the least common style is the usage of special rings regulating the diffusion rate, the fancy equivalent of the aperture. The only representative of this obscure method I can think of now is the Rodenstock Imagon, where they were snapped onto the front thread like filters or lens hoods. The downside is the need to keep an eye on them - these little buggers are conspired together with lens caps, remote triggers and odd socks for frequent escapes into the unknown.

There are of course exceptions, for example lacking the SF effect selector as well as the possibility of selecting the aperture. So you have a fixed focus, a fixed aperture and a fixed amount of softness. Now fight! For example the valued Plasticca or some iterations of Puyo lenses will make you life harder.

• Some optical designs (pictorialist lenses like the Puyo or Eidoscope in particular were affected) were not corrected for color photography, optical defects and the entire color spectrum. The most painful part was mainly chromatic aberration, for which so-called chemical focus had to be reckoned with. Simply put, the output photo was out of focus due to the ultraviolet light (the human eye's difficulty in focusing on the blue part of the spectrum is mainly to blame) - hence the scales on the lens chassis for subsequent correction (Puyo). With modern panchromatic films this problem should not arise, however, fans of orthochromatic films or collodion and other processes sensitive to the blue part of the spectrum should beware.

How to do it?

And of course there are wild exceptions of the exceptions stemming from experimental spirit of the human nature or deep pockets. First of all, one can experiment with ordinary lenses - just partially unscrew the front or rear member and create a "fake" soft-focus effect not unlike much more expensive specimens designed for this purpose. Take a note however, that not every optical design is inclined to this, and triplets and their derivatives are generally well suited to it.

• An ideal candidate for testing might be, for example, the notorious Tessar. There are many types, they are everywhere and they are cheap.

Also, the optical members of the lens (or entire lenses) can be rotated, flipped or removed entirely. Not everywhere you can do this and not everywhere it will have the meaningful effect which one you desired, but why not...

• Rotating usually reduces the coverage and makes the lens expression kind of crazy. Extraction usually takes the front member off and results in a substantial increase in focal length, decrease in lens speed and increase in coverage.
• Some lenses are designed with these modifications in mind and are purposely built for this - so-called convertible lenses - generally as a portrait/landscape tandem (old petzvals or Spencer Port-Land, from Portrait-Landscape). However, modular solutions, called casket sets, are also popular, where you are adding and removing accessory lenses and change focal points (de facto predecessors of zoom lenses). So you can cover several lenses with one kit. But more about that another time.

If, however, you find all this too civilised, you can like the old masters put petroleum jelly on the front lens or pull a stocking or curtain over it. Results are not guaranteed, but the fun is 100%. Oh and when you pull down the hosiery from some poor lady under the auspices of a higher artistic principle, I disclaim all responsibility.

If you've made it this far through today's jumble and still feel pictorialistically unfulfilled, you might find this multi-part article on large format soft-focus optics useful - including examples and illustrations. For individuals who have not yet found the one and only large format true path, this book with tutorials and examples for medium format and 35mm in particular may also be useful. Just be careful - this hole is pretty damn deep and I warned you - there is peace in my soul.

I expressed my love for impressionism and pictorialism, so I will perhaps just pass some of my hard-earned life wisdoms - perfection is in imperfection! The world is edgy and sharp, at least photograph it softly! Even dreams can be immortalized! A softy lens for every family! Salt the water well before you boil the pasta!