I've exhausted any and everything I could think of to shoot w/the Kodak Portrait lens, but I was thrilled shooting w/this lens, a truly great and user friendly SF/portrait lens which is at this time, a fairly inexpensive semi-achromatic cousin of the Pinkham Smiths.

I've run out of things to shoot w/the Kodak, time to shoot w/something else, and w/a different motif, so I've reached for the one lens I haven't 'aired out', the Gundlach Achromatic Meniscus alias the Pinkham & Smith 'Synthetic'.  

The first shot is of a vase that I'd already shot w/the Kodak Portrait but w/a dark motif, the second image is of a plain reflector, and the third is of a decorative bottle flanked by two magnifiers. 

The Gundlach nee Synthetic wasn't given a lot of respect by some folks, and has snuck under the radar, compared to the more famous Semi-Achromatics and Visual Quality, but again, you can exhange the character/personality/signature of these lenses as you change subject matter/lighting/exposure and for me the different signatures of these various lenses are simply 'starting points' rather than a constriction.......These lenses can change/exchange personalities.

Some things that've become evident to me from messing around w/these things.....You do have a choice of whether you want a halo/glow/halation around your subject matter(underexpose-lower illumnation or increasing shutter time keeping the lens wideopen).........You can get  some sharpness/crispness/smoothness in the foreground subject matter and transition from that to the abstract/stylized background effects these lenses tend to create.........if you keep winding up w/mush when you use these lenses, mush that you don't want, it's you, not the lens.  

If making things soft were the only things you could produce w/these things, I would've stopped buying/using them a long time ago.   The way they create transitions from BR to FG, and abrstraction, and the surreal, is what keeps me excited about them.