How do I achieve the natural hazy/non-contrast effect without photoshop?

dmward wrote in post #16356732
Petroleum jelly on a UV filter is a nice way to create vignettes and soft focus.

We did that a lot with film. With digital I prefer to do the special effects in post.

As do I, and I second the LR approach as what may look good today may not look so good tomorrow. (But I believe the OP was looking for a way to do it in camera).

Foodguy wrote in post #16356783
As do I, and I second the LR approach as what may look good today may not look so good tomorrow. (But I believe the OP was looking for a way to do it in camera).

That's one of the things that I find amusing. Those of us who learned the craft shooting film with hot lights in studios with cases of dulling spray, and other accouterments to get the image as close as possible to the AD's vision before capturing it on film, seem to be happy to get a good raw file on the card and take care of the special effects while processing in software on a computer. On the other hand, those without memories of the time and frustration required to get it perfect before the shutter clicked, seem driven to doing special effects SOOC.

What they seem to forget is that when we did it on film we (at least I ) always shot normal exposures as well. Just to make sure I had something in case the AD changed his mind.

dmward wrote in post #16356732
Petroleum jelly on a UV filter is a nice way to create vignettes and soft focus.

We did that a lot with film. With digital I prefer to do the special effects in post.

More in post #5:
Enlarging through Vaseline

Lightroom 5 has a radial tool that may be useful. It can be placed anywhere on the image, shaped round of oval and then apply all the sliders. Worth playing around with to see how well it will work for the effect you're after.

Here's an example of how it can be used. I put the radial over the flowers and set its parameters using the sliders.
Quick and effective. Could have made it even hazier by adding white rather than the soft yellow color.
(Personally, I'd not use it on this shoot but it was handy for an example.)