Sally Mann's sharp AND soft pictures

In Sally Mann's beatiful Intimate Family several of the

pictures are sharp in the middle but feature an abrupt

decrease in sharpness towards the edges and corners. It's

not subtle (but strikingly effective).

 

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She uses an 8x10 view camera, but how is the sharp/soft

effect above achieved? (1) Is it during the taking stage

or in the darkroom? (2) Is it (as I suspect) an effect of

using lenses that are made for smaller formats than

8x10? (3) If none of (1) or (2), what? Coke-bottles?

 

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Thank you for any answer from you knowledgeable large-

format shooters. Note, this is a technical question,

not a question on how Sally Mann is able to turn out

the pictures as she does (which would require a strong

mother-child bond anyway, in addition to skill).

Probably not (2), since the lens wouldn't cover an 8x10" negative - it would only cause severe vignetting. I've seen some (unnamed) filters which may be able to do what you described. These are clear in the centre and get progressively diffused as you go towards the edges of the filter. I'm just guessing here.

Sally uses old/"damaged" lenses which barely cover 8x10. She has no

secret techniques other than developing paper in VERY OLD, extremely

oxidized film developer and the occasional toning in odd substances

such as tea.

Yes, she experiments with all kinds of old, undistinguished (i.e., not

Dagors, Artars, etc.) lenses--kind of a large format Holga approach.

Modern lenses are usually shielded to vignette sharply before the

image circle degrades. Older lenses may go soft at the corners before

they begin to vignette.

Peter: You can get the same effect with a single element meniscus

lens. It isn't complicated. A close-up attachment lens designed for

35mm cameras works well. This is the plus lens that screws into the

finlter ring of the 35mm lens. Mount it in front of a shutter and you

are in business. You will have to figure out the f-stops. Good

shooting.

Peter, that should read screws into the FILTER ring of the 35mm lens.

Sorry about the typo. Doug.

There is nothing special in Ms. Mann's photographs of her family. She

used an 8x10 camera and older lenses with shutters. The photo's that

you speak of, I believe, were shot wide open with little depth of

field. You could also achieve this shallow depth by swinging the

front tilt of the camera up/down. But, I don't believe her older

camera has this ability.

 

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Now, that her family has grown up, she has started to take landscape

pictures of the old south. She is using the older lenses with

all of their problems (some without shutters) for this project. She

is also using glass plates for many of these photo's. There was an

artilce in 'View Camera' Sept/Oct 99 concerning this new project.

 

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Personally, I don't care for her new style and I'm appalled at how

much she's getting for these out of focus vignetted photo's. I don't

believe these photos would be given a second thought if they were not

taken by her (or another photographer of her statue).

If you look at a lot of work from around 100 years ago, you see

similar effects. At that time, the Rapid Rectilinear design was

widely used in large format and it's definition falls off at the edges

especially if used near wide open. Other designs like the Petzval

portrait lenses had a curved field of focus (like a saucer); sharper

in the direct center and softer at the edges--in order to photograph a

group of say 6 or 8 figures (and get them all in focus), the

photographer had to arrange them in a semi-circle roughly

corresponding to the curvature of the lens. Sally Mann has said that

she tries dozens of old lenses looking for interesting results. The

Pinkham-Smith, Graf Variable, Spencer Portland, and Wollensak Verito

were notable for the soft/sharp manipulations with the variations in

sharpness controlled by the iris and selective focus. The present day

Imagon has been around at least 100 years and produces similar

results.

As to using a close-up meniscus lens for soft-focus , I get much

better coverage by mounting the filter behind the shutter rather than

in front. The front of the filter thus facing the film.