Soft focus mode

[hans]

Nearly 20 years ago, I started photographing with the EOS 1000FN (Rebel II). This camera had a nice function which was unique in the history of EOS.

A description from an inofficial manual in the web:

Soft focus.

    The SF mode is for "soft focus." The original Rebel/Rebel S/EOS 1000/1000 QD lacks this feature - only the Rebel II and EOS 1000N/etc cameras have it.

    In this mode the camera takes two photos on the same frame, one a split second after the other. It defocuses the lens for the second shot, thereby rendering a softish blurry look to the photo. Obviously you have to have the lens in AF (autofocus) mode for this feature to work. The defocussing distance depends on the focussing distance. As with the self-timer the SF mode is the same as Program AE mode when it comes to metering. And like the self-timer tunes, this SF feature was only ever included with this camera, I believe.

    Soft focus actually has two settings - 1 and 2, adjustable by the main dial.1 is blurry ("weak") and 2 is very blurry ("strong").

I'd like to have this function back now on my 500D. No double exposure of course like the original does, just 2 exposures with minimum delay that I can overlay later on the PC, first normal, second defocused with configurable amount of defocusing. Maybe also a third exposure even more defocused, similar to AEB.

Basically, this could be made with the focus stacking function for macro. But that is based on live view which leads to a long delay which is not acceptable to me for handheld portrait photos.

[a1ex]

The delay is hard to reduce - you can play with timings, but it's very likely to get into trouble. Focus commands are only accepted in LiveView.

Hint: maybe aligning the two images in post helps.