What has good Bokeh

Could someone please list those lenses that, have good bokeh? As far as I
can tell they are limited to: a) a good share of Leica lenses; and, b) some
pentax lenses; and c) very little else. I'm _not_ intersted in esoteric
lenses such as some lens on an old folder from the fifties etc., (including
canon fd, etc., etc.).

--
Regards,
Matt Clara
www.mattclara.com

With any prime lens which do not have any aspherical elements, the
bokeh is usually good.

I love the bokeh of my Pentax FA* 85/1.4 which is the best amongst all
my (12+) Pentax lenses.

But it should be noted that bokeh is a subjective thing, though.

Best Regards,
RiceHigh
http://www.geocities.com/ricehigh

Matt Clara wrote:
Could someone please list those lenses that, have good bokeh? As far
as I can tell they are limited to: a) a good share of Leica lenses;
and, b) some pentax lenses; and c) very little else. I'm _not_
intersted in esoteric lenses such as some lens on an old folder from
the fifties etc., (including canon fd, etc., etc.).

Here's a shot taken with Canon's 100-400 IS L (which I no longer have, but
wish I did):
http://www.pbase.com/markuson/image/47306216
Smooth, pleasing bokeh.

Here's a another shot that would have been a bokeh disaster with most
lenses, but was handled extremely well by Canon's 24-70 2.8 L (Hmmm...maybe
I shouldn't sell this lens after all...):

This shot of leaves was illuminated from BEHIND (sunbeam shining through
them), with very bright sky spots and other very busy, messy leaf-highlights
behind these (see upper left portion of frame). This sort of background
usually leads to total crap bokeh, but this is darn good--especially
considering that it was shot at f13 (!), which is hardly an aperture usually
associated with good bokeh.

Note the LACK of hard-edged circles around the highlights directly to the
left of the main subject.
http://www.pbase.com/markuson/image/47770602

-Mark

Matt Clara wrote:
Could someone please list those lenses that, have good bokeh? As far as I
can tell they are limited to: a) a good share of Leica lenses; and, b) some
pentax lenses; and c) very little else. I'm _not_ intersted in esoteric
lenses such as some lens on an old folder from the fifties etc., (including
canon fd, etc., etc.).


Nikon 105 mm f2.5 AIS . . . just to name one.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com

"Matt Clara" wrote in message
...
Could someone please list those lenses that, have good bokeh? As far as I
can tell they are limited to: a) a good share of Leica lenses; and, b)
some pentax lenses; and c) very little else. I'm _not_ intersted in
esoteric lenses such as some lens on an old folder from the fifties etc.,
(including canon fd, etc., etc.).

--
Regards,
Matt Clara
www.mattclara.com

I'm sorta curious what constitutes "good 'bokeh.'" I've seen bad, but I've
seen several lenses that produce what I feel is a smooth, soft out of focus
area, like my Canon 100 f2:
http://www.pbase.com/skipm/image/53329055
my 24-70 f2.8L:
http://www.pbase.com/skipm/image/53453738
and my 70-200 f2.8L:
http://www.pbase.com/skipm/image/54035194
All are better than my 28-135 IS and Tokina 28-70 f2.6-2.8, but are they
"excellent?" It's tough for me to judge...

--
Skip Middleton
http://www.shadowcatcherimagery.com

Skip M wrote:
"Matt Clara" wrote in message
...
Could someone please list those lenses that, have good bokeh? As
far as I can tell they are limited to: a) a good share of Leica
lenses; and, b) some pentax lenses; and c) very little else. I'm
_not_ intersted in esoteric lenses such as some lens on an old
folder from the fifties etc., (including canon fd, etc., etc.).

--
Regards,
Matt Clara
www.mattclara.com

I'm sorta curious what constitutes "good 'bokeh.'" I've seen bad,
but I've seen several lenses that produce what I feel is a smooth,
soft out of focus area, like my Canon 100 f2:
http://www.pbase.com/skipm/image/53329055

IMO, most any lens shot using that huge an aperture will do reasonably
well--especially with no bright background highlights...so it's perhaps not
the best sample shot (that's NOT to say anything negative about that lens,
rather that this shot might not be the best indicator). I think what
usually what sets good bokeh example apart is the way they show the handling
difficult backgrounds. Your model is only partially in focus, so it's
pretty easy to render the background WAY out of focus. But what happens
when you use an aperture that gets more DOF on the model? Can it still
render a background that isn't overly defined? Perhaps another shot would
show that...

Here's a shot with your same 24-70 2.8 L lens, but with a very tricky
background...and at a pretty small aperture. I think it passes with flying
colors, especially considering that the scene and small aperture combination
that would usually lead to ugly OOF qualities:

http://www.pbase.com/markuson/image/47770602/original

To me, this shot shows that the lens produces nice bokeh where others might
fail.
-No overly defined circles around the bright spots, and no converging, bloby
circles where the messy backgroud leaves cross.

-Mark

Nikon afn 180mm f2.8


Could someone please list those lenses that, have good bokeh? As far as I
can tell they are limited to: a) a good share of Leica lenses; and, b)
some pentax lenses; and c) very little else. I'm _not_ intersted in
esoteric lenses such as some lens on an old folder from the fifties etc.,
(including canon fd, etc., etc.).

--
Regards,
Matt Clara
www.mattclara.com

"Mark²" mjmorgan(lowest even number wrote:
Skip M wrote:
I'm sorta curious what constitutes "good 'bokeh.'" I've seen bad,
but I've seen several lenses that produce what I feel is a smooth,
soft out of focus area, like my Canon 100 f2:
http://www.pbase.com/skipm/image/53329055

IMO, most any lens shot using that huge an aperture will do reasonably
well--especially with no bright background highlights...so it's perhaps not
the best sample shot (that's NOT to say anything negative about that lens,
rather that this shot might not be the best indicator). I think what

Agreed on all of the above. There isn't much in the background that would
change between a lense with "great bokeh" and one with "okay bokeh". A
lense with really horrible bokeh probably would make some of the vertical
lines in the background look very annoying with double edges, but that's
about it.

However, "good" bokeh seems to be *very* subjective...

usually what sets good bokeh example apart is the way they show the handling
difficult backgrounds. Your model is only partially in focus, so it's
pretty easy to render the background WAY out of focus. But what happens
when you use an aperture that gets more DOF on the model? Can it still
render a background that isn't overly defined? Perhaps another shot would
show that...

Here's a shot with your same 24-70 2.8 L lens, but with a very tricky
background...and at a pretty small aperture. I think it passes with flying
colors, especially considering that the scene and small aperture combination
that would usually lead to ugly OOF qualities:

http://www.pbase.com/markuson/image/47770602/original

To me, this shot shows that the lens produces nice bokeh where others might
fail.
-No overly defined circles around the bright spots, and no converging, bloby
circles where the messy backgroud leaves cross.

For example, I don't agree with that analysis of this image. I
see what appears to be a six bladed aperture, and especially the
brighter backgroud highlights have noticable "donut"
characteristics.

My subjective opinion is that a lense with an odd number of
blades in the aperture is nicer, though in that image it would
make no difference. But a lense with 8 or 9 blades would have
been significantly better! And it appears that spherical
aberations is slightly over corrected, and that a lense with
under corrected aberations would have produced a nicer
background.

The lower left is rather rough looking, a would have been helped
significantly by either a different lens or a wider aperture
setting.

I would expect that Photoshop could cure anything wrong with
that photo that would have been better with a different lense.
(And note that switching to a different lense would probably
have lost the shot entirely, so I see nothing to be negative
about; and it *is* a very pleasant image!)

Here is a really great series of articles on lense
characteristics related to bokeh. Jumping to the third one gets
to the point faster, but reading the first two provides a
background.

http://www.vanwalree.com/optics/spherical.html
http://www.vanwalree.com/optics/astigmatism.html
http://www.vanwalree.com/optics/bokeh.html

This one isn't the best explaination around, but some of the
details it demonstrates are really interesting.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/bokeh.shtml

Here is a URL showing what can be done using Nikon's "Defocus
Control" lenses (105mm f/2D AF DC-Nikkor).

http://www.stacken.kth.se/~maxz/defocuscontrol/


--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

"Matt Clara" wrote:

Could someone please list those lenses that, have good bokeh? As far as I
can tell they are limited to: a) a good share of Leica lenses; and, b) some
pentax lenses; and c) very little else. I'm _not_ intersted in esoteric
lenses such as some lens on an old folder from the fifties etc., (including
canon fd, etc., etc.).


Let's start with Nikon:

FFL:
85mm f/1.4 AI(S) and AF-D Nikkors*
100mm f/2.8 Nikon Series E
105mm f/1.8 AI(S) Nikkor
105mm f/2.5 AI(S) Nikkor*
105mm f/2 DC AF-D Nikkor*
135mm f/2 DC AF-D Nikkor*
180mm f/2.8 AI(S) and AF Nikkors*

Zooms:
75-150mm f/3.5 Nikon Series E*

I've put an asterisk next to the ones I think have the best bokeh.

In article VbDBf.44623$V.5621@fed1read04, "Mark²" mjmorgan(lowest
even number says...
Matt Clara wrote:
Could someone please list those lenses that, have good bokeh? As far
as I can tell they are limited to: a) a good share of Leica lenses;
and, b) some pentax lenses; and c) very little else. I'm _not_
intersted in esoteric lenses such as some lens on an old folder from
the fifties etc., (including canon fd, etc., etc.).

Here's a shot taken with Canon's 100-400 IS L (which I no longer have, but
wish I did):
http://www.pbase.com/markuson/image/47306216
Smooth, pleasing bokeh.

Here's a another shot that would have been a bokeh disaster with most
lenses, but was handled extremely well by Canon's 24-70 2.8 L (Hmmm...maybe
I shouldn't sell this lens after all...):

This shot of leaves was illuminated from BEHIND (sunbeam shining through
them), with very bright sky spots and other very busy, messy leaf-highlights
behind these (see upper left portion of frame). This sort of background
usually leads to total crap bokeh, but this is darn good--especially
considering that it was shot at f13 (!), which is hardly an aperture usually
associated with good bokeh.

Note the LACK of hard-edged circles around the highlights directly to the
left of the main subject.
http://www.pbase.com/markuson/image/47770602

Gotta disagree with you here. That bokeh looks harsh to me. Both pics.

--
DD
www.dallasdahms.com
Tell your tits to stop staring at my eyes.