Some use soft-focus filters for "women of a certain age", but this is a matter of taste, and a bit antiquated. There are softening filters made by pretty much all the manufacturers, but those attempting to reproduce the effects of late 19th century portraits tend to favour the Zeiss Softar design. It is currently sold by B&W filters in two strengths. It maintains a high degree of overall sharpness while adding a pearly blur to highlights. Most other filters simply kill sharpness.
Realize that once shot with one of these filters, sharpness can NOT be restored. It is embedded in your image FOREVER. The effect is usually better added in the interpretation stage, either in the digital darkroom or the traditional fume-room.
If you are shooting black & white film, a green #11 can somewhat enhance a swarthy male complexion, but it is devastating to a feminine complexion. Again, it would generally be better to shoot colour negative and use the filter when printing on pan paper than embedding the effect in a B&W negative. In the digital darkroom, Photoshop's channel mixer can produce the same effect with a high degree of sensitivity and control.
Realize that inappropriate use of a filter is a formula for disaster, and specially so with portraits. If you are a highly experienced shooter doing fashion or publicity photography or album covers, you might find some use for filters. However, if you were, you would not be asking this question. Best advice - do no use filters for portraits unless there is some very unusual circumstance for a bizarre shot that absolutely can not be done after the fact when interpreting in Photoshop or the fume-room.
Filters are special purpose devices designed to solve definable photographic problems. Once you have defined the problem, then the choice of device becomes obvious. They are not everyday solutions in search of problems however. One should ONLY use filters when one absolutely has no other recourse.
At best, you are putting two more glass surfaces in your optical path. If they are of a quality equal to or better than your lens, you are probably not reducing the quality of your image significantly. If it is a piece of windowglass thrust upon you by an aggressive camera salesdude to "protect" your lens, toss it. Oldest scam in the business.
larry! http://www.larry-bolch.com/ ICQ 76620504
Realize that once shot with one of these filters, sharpness can NOT be restored. It is embedded in your image FOREVER. The effect is usually better added in the interpretation stage, either in the digital darkroom or the traditional fume-room.
If you are shooting black & white film, a green #11 can somewhat enhance a swarthy male complexion, but it is devastating to a feminine complexion. Again, it would generally be better to shoot colour negative and use the filter when printing on pan paper than embedding the effect in a B&W negative. In the digital darkroom, Photoshop's channel mixer can produce the same effect with a high degree of sensitivity and control.
Realize that inappropriate use of a filter is a formula for disaster, and specially so with portraits. If you are a highly experienced shooter doing fashion or publicity photography or album covers, you might find some use for filters. However, if you were, you would not be asking this question. Best advice - do no use filters for portraits unless there is some very unusual circumstance for a bizarre shot that absolutely can not be done after the fact when interpreting in Photoshop or the fume-room.
Filters are special purpose devices designed to solve definable photographic problems. Once you have defined the problem, then the choice of device becomes obvious. They are not everyday solutions in search of problems however. One should ONLY use filters when one absolutely has no other recourse.
At best, you are putting two more glass surfaces in your optical path. If they are of a quality equal to or better than your lens, you are probably not reducing the quality of your image significantly. If it is a piece of windowglass thrust upon you by an aggressive camera salesdude to "protect" your lens, toss it. Oldest scam in the business.
larry! http://www.larry-bolch.com/ ICQ 76620504