[Leica] Wow, the last word on Bokeh, from Zeiss

[jbm at jbm.org (Jeff Moore)]

2010-04-14-11:44:40 Tim Gray:
> So which Leica ASPH lenses have 'harsh' bokeh?  Particularly when 
> compared to their pre-ASPH ancestors.

I remember soon after I got my 35mm Summilux ASPH (around 15 years
ago, maybe?) looking at a picture I'd taken with it and really wishing
I'd had my 35mm Summicron on the camera at the time instead.  It was a
photo with a person in the foreground and some tree leaves in the
background, and the partly-out-of-focus leaves had created a
hard-edged "jangly" geometric pattern which I found really distracting
and annoying, drawing attention away from the primary subject.

Did I stop using the lens?  Oh, no -- because it's so good at
rendering crisp detail of things in focus, and its worst-looking bokeh
turns out to occur in a way which really jumps out and slaps you in
only a small minority of conditions.  It's continued to be one of my
most-used lenses, especially on the M8.  But... the older 35 Summicron
never did that kind of stuff as it went out of focus.  It was also
never nearly as detailed, especially somewhere near wide open.

 -Jeff