mmkallio

This is a picture of my wife taken the second day after purchasing a Lomography New Petzval 85mm F2.2 lens used here. It's a manual focus, or rather a manual everything, art lens. Optical design of the lens is over 170 years old and apertures are separate plates with holes that need to be inserted into the lens. It produces swirly bokeh because of massive aberrations. It's not a fast (to shoot) lens. It's not the sharpest lens either. Still I find myself being very exited and happy to shoot with it. The day this image was taken was quite windy at times. Our 11 years old kid wanted to assist us and I let her hold the diffusor. It was a struggle because of the wind and because her height. There was also a lot of wasps around. My wife has a small fobia of wasps and I guess I have the same problem. So we ran a lot because of the wasps and I had to manually focus the lens over and over again. This shot was taken after I told my wife to try to "look super beautiful". She bursted to laughter and I managed to push the shutter button just the right time so she quite nailed the "super beautiful" looks. :) Editing was done with Capture One Pro 9. I added vignetting and did some dodge and burn to skin and hair. The bokeh is not edited at all. All the bokeh in this picture comes from the optical design of the Petzval 85mm at full open F2.2. Critique and comments are very welcome. Due to the conditions I was not able to frame this shot perfectly. I have pictures from the session with better composition and with a better background. I just personally love this image because of the authentic expression. Because of the swirl effect, I was not willing to crop this pic either.