To provide a soft focus application device, which can maintain a transparent state by suppressing influences of an incident angle to haze when a soft focus operation is not performed, and which can suppress influences of hue on a photographed image when a soft focus operation is performed.

The soft focus application device comprises a liquid crystal element 21 fixedly disposed in front of an imaging element 11 of an imaging device. The liquid crystal element includes a liquid crystal composition containing a liquid crystal and a curable compound that can be dissolved in the liquid crystal, held between a pair of substrates with electrodes, and exhibits a light-transmitting state, a light-scattering state and an intermediate state between the light-transmitting state and the light-scattering state, in accordance with an applied voltage. The whole amount of the curable compound with respect to the liquid crystal composition is 0.1 mass% or more and 20 mass% or less.