One of the topics for our next photo club meeting is ‘Soft Focus’. That’s a bit of a problem for me because I like things sharp enough to cut your finger. I’d like to do soft focus for fashion or glamour. I’d like to try some of those old fifties tricks: Vaseline on the front element or a bit of gauze stretched over the lens. I hope I’ve got that right.
 
Another old thing that was used for landscape was the ‘Orton Effect’. You have a standard layer an overexposed layer and a blurred layer. There are various descriptions of how you do that digitally but the thing they all have in common is that they all look awful (I’ve put one effort in as an extra)!
 
   
Anyway after far playing around with that I went out with my camera and my macro lens set to f2.8 to see what transpired. Hmm? I quite like this one of the Campion in the hedgerow but I’m not sure it’s soft focus because the focus is fairly tight on a couple of the flowers.