Akershus Festning ( fortress/castle ) II

Yes, another fuzzy-wuzzy. There will be a discussion about actinic focus at the Calotype Society soon, and I think this photograph will help. I forgot to make the focus correction on this one. I came back the next day and made one with actinic focus correction, and I think you can understand much of what I wrote below by comparing the two photographs, although the views are not identical and it was windy during the second one.

"Actinic focus" means focusing the light the calotype is sensitive to, rather than the light our eyes can see. We can't see UV light, but that's what the calotype sees most. All modern camera lenses are "achromatic" and focus different kinds of light the same. This is an uncorrected lens, so different colors of light are focused differently. To correct this, I should have moved the lens 3 or 4 mm closer to the calotype. After the correction, the ground glass would look blurry, but the image would have been sharp where I intended on the resulting photograph.

But first I'm going to make some comments about what I was hoping to do here, and there's something interesting.

First of all, about soft focus. This is an un-coated single element meniscus lens. It has all the aberrations. The original calotypists would never have used the lens this way, they would have stopped way down, everything in reasonable focus and minimal aberrations. They would also have corrected for "actinic focus". But there is also a range of more open apertures where the out of focus areas can be quite beautiful -- and it's not really the same thing as what modern photographers call "bokeh". The transition is more gradual and smooth from the in-focus to out-of-focus areas, with more diffusion and glow; more like how a painter would exclude non-subject detail to enhance the subject or provide aerial perspective. When it's done right it can be lovely, but it's also easy to make something displeasing, and it goes against our culturally ingrained aesthetic that everything in a photograph should be pin-sharp ( even though that's not all all how we see and experience the world! )

In this photograph, I was trying to emphasize the near wall and the apple tree on top of it. I was hoping the mixed stonework on the castle wall behind would be softer but still interesting, and I was trying to render the shrubbery in front more diffuse with nice glow. After framing the scene, I used focus and rear tilt to bring detail out on the wall and tree, and really lovely diffuse highlights in the shrubbery.

I made two mistakes. First, the building on the right has too many sharp details and high contrast areas, so it became very distracting. I should have moved closer and excluded it. When the soft-focus effects are in the shrubs, it can look pleasing and help the composition. When the soft-focus effects are on that building with high contrast details, it's jarring. But I do have an excuse: it didn't look that way on the ground glass!

Secondly, I forgot to make the actinic focus correction. This scene does not look very much like what I composed and saw with my eyes on the ground glass. I had the front wall and gate pretty sharp, and part of the apple tree perfectly sharp ( I wanted the trunk on the right to stand out starkly ). The castle wall behind was a little soft and the building on the right was a little soft, but neither had really strong swirly or blurry areas.. just a little. I was aware the building on the right was a potential problem, but I was hoping it would be okay - mildly out of focus.

This calotype appears to be out of focus everywhere, but if you look closely you can see that there is an area of sharper definition in front of the wall. It goes through the stones on the ground ( 6 or 8 feet in front of the gate ) and it cuts through the shrubbery on the right. That's my composition -- the one that included the wall and part of the tree! But because I forgot to correct for actinic focus, it is shifted forward, in front of what it looked like on the ground glass.

Now here's something interesting, and I'm not sure if it is just a coincidence or something real. But the area of sharper definition in the shrubs is exactly the area my attention was on for the soft focus specular highlight glow. I carefully maximized the effect to be right there. Isn't that interesting? So when you are looking at the ground glass on the camera, the places where the highlight glow is most defined is where the actinic light is in focus. I guess that makes some sense.

TLDR: because I forgot the correction, the place in the scene with beautiful highlight glow ended up being in focus. The places meant to be in focus ended up blurry. The strongest soft-focus aberrations ended up in unintended places, like the building on the right. Actinic focus correction matters a lot!

And finally, I want to mention one more thing about trying to make a soft focus calotype. Looking at where the glow and specular effects are on the ground glass is probably useless. Even though I've only made a few, I've seen enough to realize that strong effects on the ground glass disappear on the calotype. Too much of what your eye sees is in red and yellow and orange light that the calotype is blind to. Our calotypes are sensitive to UV, violet, blue and a little green. But there is still some chromatic separation and some beautiful soft focus effects are possible: you can see it in the shrubbery here and in the backgrounds on the Hovedøya calotypes. I think the key will be experience and developing a feel for how the GG translates to the calotype, and that will only happen with practice.