Winter Coat Moose wrote:
> I prefer, and have always preferred, classic bokeh, where OOF
> highlights show an Airy disk quality of bright
> center slowly fading from that center to invisibility.
Absolutely!!! Whoa, this is creepy. Moose and AG agreeing today. Yup. It's 2012.
I do find it remarkably hard to find lenses that do this consistantly.
The 100/2.8 will if the focus point is close enough. At longer working
distances, especially when using it on the crop-sensor cameras, the
bokeh gets busy. The 50/1.4 is busy most of the time, but will come
into it's own if you focus it really close. The 35-80 is near perfect
at any distance and focal length. But I'll come back to this in a
second.
> The water lily shot goes so far as to have actual donuts in the far right
> background, like a mirror lens.
You can blame the aspherical elements and over-correction for this.
Very typical and classic rendition of OOF highlights for highly
corrected lenses with apsherical elements.
> That is a mighty fine lens! So nice that when I look at samples, I briefly
> consider LF. ;-)
I'm of the opinion that it is OK to base a kit around a lens or one
componant if it is a specific part of what drives your style.
Happiness is also a factor, but harder to quantify. I use Olympus
because of the lenses. I'm happiest with the images I get from them as
they help me express myself in ways that normal lenses don't. Life is
too short to try and pretend to be whatever it is that you are not or
chasing what everybody else is chasing. If you feel that strongly
about that lens, by all means get it and spend serious time shooting
LF. It's another world, not an easy one, but the satisfaction of a
well-executed photograph is worth something.
OK, back to the subject of busy bokeh and aspherical elements. As I'm
talked about a few times before, I see a difference in how modern
lenses render the plane of focus as compared to older lens designs.
With an older lens design, the rate of defocus is greater either side
of the plane of focus, thus expanding the bokeh blobs a bit. But what
this also does is define a thin plane of focus. A modern lens desgin
often times will have more of a zone of focus. The rate of defocus is
not only lower than a classic prime, but the edge of the bokeh,
instead of being a nice smooth airy disk, turns into a donut as the
OOF image actually inverts into itself. What this is doing is
increasing the edge contrast of what is out of focus, creating the
impression of greater sharpness. When it is close to the plane of
focus, the impact is of creating more apparent DoF as what is nearly
in focus but not really in focus looks in focus because the edges are
still sharp.
I'm not claiming that the DoF is actually greater, but it has the
appearance of it. With an older lens if you missed the focus point by
just a little bit the picture was junk. With a modern lens, if you
miss the exact focus point, the picture is still workable in most
cases.
The Zuiko 50/1.4 is a fascinating beast. At most working distances,
the bokeh doesn't really form much of an airy disk.
AG
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