Some test data for anyone who is interested in seeing the 135mm Soft Focus perform

I received a beautiful 135mm f/2.8 Soft Focus lens for Christmas from a gift exchange. It's in pristine condition (and it's been discontinued for 2 years now) and the first thing I wanted to do was figure out how it performed at all the different soft focus settings. These are my results. It is a wonderful lens. I have already taken portraits at the soft focus setting of "1" @ f/4 and f/5.6 and they look amazing. It's a subtle effect at those settings and can't be replicated in Photoshop. Really cool!

I can only attach 2 images per post, so I'll post everything in groups. All shots were taken with a 1D X at ISO 1600. Above each photo will be its shutter speed, aperture, and soft focus setting.

This photo was taken at 1/200, f/2.8, SF = 0

This image was taken at 1/200, f/2.8, SF = 2

This image was taken at 1/100, f/4, SF = 1

.... and finally, f/5.6...


This image was taken at 1/50, f/5.6, SF = 0

This image was taken at 1/50, f/5.6, SF = 2

I had really wondered about that lens, so thank-you for posting these tests fotos CRCchemist!

My application is glamour though (belly dancers). Do you have in mind use for this lens with models/people? I think the softness I see with your rose test fotos might be cleaner and less obtrustive or obvious than a softness filter added to a lens. Also, I think the soft lens does some things in-camera that might be something that could be emulated in post-production, but really it's just better to get right in-camera.

glad you managed to grab one...i don't think i've ever really used the soft focus on mine, but i may have to do a bit of experimentation with it next time i bust it out.

I've wondered for a while if this could be replicated in Photoshop. The general consensus is that you can get close, but it's not exactly the same effect. The look out of camera with this lens is indeed different. Basically, for people who don't have this lens, they duplicate the layer, apply some blurs and contrast changes to the top layer, then reduce the opacity and change the blending mode to soft light. That'll get you close. It's kind of like taking a shot with a 24mm tilt-shift lens and comparing that to a shot taken with a regular 24mm lens that's been doctored in Photoshop to give the tilt-shift miniaturization toy effect. It gets close, but it really doesn't look quite the same.

For glamour, I think this will give a really awesome style to your shots. I can see that with a very subtle soft-focus effect of a client with some candles in the scene, you're going to have some really winning photos for your clients.

The key with this is to keep it SUBTLE. Any of the settings at f/2.8 seem to be overkill. Once you hit f/4, it starts to give everything a very nice glow. At f/5.6 it's very subtle - not noticeable on anything that's in focus, but rather noticeable as a glow in the bokeh along contrast zones.

It does reduce contrast progressively as you increase the Soft Focus effect. That can work in favor of or against your photo, depending on what you're going for.

Mine came from KEH, if you're thinking about buying one.

I recently got this lens, so my first attempt. If I am not mistaken, the soft focus was set to -1.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qGdG​mK

Thank you for showing these images here!
One of the more interesting Canon EF lenses for me (the MP-E and Tilt-Shift are others).

I would like to see images with blur from a small lightsource / reflex or such in the background. You know these bokeh images
The spherical aberration correction is altered with this lens, and this can not easily be made in Photoshop. I suppose the Canon 135 Softfocus works a bit like the Nikon 105 and 135mm f/2.0 DC (Defocus Control) Nikkor lenses - but only in one way, not both under- and over corrected spherical aberration from one lens.

I really liked this lens. I just never got to play and actually use the soft focus feature enough. My biggest gripe was how bad the chromatic abberation was so I ended up with a 135L.

Second shot with this lens.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/r12X​PP

Nice tests, I sold mine a while back to go with some other options.

A little history detailing the origins of soft focus 100+ years ago.......

The old glass plate negatives took quite a long time for correct exposure and this meant that the subject had to sit very still. The obvious solution was to build lenses with larger apertures (to speed up the process) but this brought its own issues.....namely a much thinner depth of field with parts of the subjects features being better focussed than others. When a little diffraction (the early offerings used the term "diffraction lens") or aberration was added to the lens, its effect was greater on the region where focus was most precise and so it had the effect of giving a greater depth of field by simply softening the sharpest plane.

Bob