Another Pentax Soft lens

Pschlute reminded us of the long gone heritage of Pentax soft focus lenses with his beautiful pet portrait - they produced 3 85mm versions (K f2.2, F f2.8 and FA f2. and a 28mm (FA 2.. The F and FA 85's are essentially the same lens (optically), while the K has a completely different optical design with just 2 elements. The main advantage (IMO) of the F and FA is that when stopped down past f8 they are actually quite sharp, if I remember the K correctly it does get a bit sharper but not to the same levels (I'm sure Peter will correct me if I'm wrong).

Here's a few samples from the SMC Pentax-F 85mm F2.8 Soft:

1.


2.


3.


4.

These lenses do produce some dreamy images which are fun.

The K 85mm only goes to f5.6 so I imagine the later versions are sharper stopped down.

I'd forgotten about the limited f-stop range on the K

Here's a photo of the F 85mm f2.8 Soft, showing the distinctive livery of the F Series...

I really like the first two images, beautiful result!

It is interesting to see how preoccupied we are today with ultimate corner to corner sharpness in lenses, and how far we have moved away from concepts like "soft lenses". However, many photographers probably use digital effects in PP to achieve similar results to that of soft lenses (possibly without knowing much about "soft lenses").

Quite so Bjorn

John, I like the "livery" of the f series, despite never having owned a single one.

Interestingly, the "soft" scale in front of the aperture numbers on the F version is different from the K version. Partly because I believe the aperture is part manual/part auto on the F and FA series. Also the aperture numbers are not visible at all on the K version when mounted "correctly"...they are underneath Of course because there is no aperture linkage on the K, it can actually be mounted in one of three different positions !