Peter Scheller

They might as well have used a lens with a lot of spherical aberration. Like the Rodenstock Imagon or the Meyer Görlitz Trioplan.
 

19 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Forget the notes, what have your experiments yielded?

My advice is if you want to smear stuff, smear it on a UV filter, not the lens. And if you smear the lens, make it dedicated and put a clean UV filter on it to preserve the look until you are finished with the project if you want things to match.

I think it will be a big difference between something put directly on the front lens or on a filter or maybe even on the rear element or in between lenses. The footage from the film suggests something behind the rear element of the lens.

19 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

They made adjustable diffusion lenses for the Pentax67 if you can adapt it. Also T mount diffusion lenses but aperture is kinda fixed. The later was a magnifying glass mounted in a sliding tube to adjust focus. The T mount lenses was heavily diffused. 

You can get a special soft focus lens from Mamiya for the 645. I once tested it and it does some serious softening. Maybe if you combine that with a net filter from Cokin?

On 11/23/2017 at 6:34 AM, Samuel Berger said:

Lovely shots, David! Were those "Love Witch" scenes the ones shot on 250D?

 

I've read the hairspray on UV filter thing. On the internet, we never know where a piece of info originated, but it's possible. His favorite lens was a Minolta Rokkor MD 50mm 1:1.7 but I don't know if it's uncoated. Bernie O'Doherty told me that if I removed the coating on my Angenieux zooms I'd be sure to get a 1930's-1940's look. Maybe the Rokkor was uncoated.

The early pictures of Hamilton where shot on a MC Rokkor 58mm 1:1.4 I believe.
The MD 50mm 1:1.7 came with the X-700 in later years.
Some of the early lenses where also treated with Thorium, making a slight yellow taint over the time.
I think the coating of modern lenses is not helping with this style of photography.
To sharp, too clear. You'll need a soft lens, with less groups of glass.
Sometimes the imperfect is the better option.

I think this guy knows exactly how it works:

http://www.maxstolzenberg.com

It seems as if he was a close friend or college of David Hamilton.
At least the pictures look exactly the same. 

Did anyone of you ever hear of this photographer?
I am curious to find out more about him.
Where does he live?  
His photos look quite pleasing.