Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/11/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 19:01 19/11/97 -0500, you wrote: <snip> > My understanding is that the term "Bokeh" refers to the way the out of > focus parts of the photograph appear. You cannot eliminate Bokeh without > eliminating the out of focus portions of the picture. The Bokeh can either > look nice, or not so nice, and is determined in part by the mechanical > construction of the lens (aperture blades) and to the extent that certain > aberations (I believe spherical is the main culprit) have been controlled. > Dan C. I'm just wondering about the trade-offs here, and how others would choose. What would I go for, given a choice of a Leica lens with very nice, ie soft, out-of-focus areas and very good but not fantastic resolution of detail, or a "better" lens with exemplary resolution but less of a smooth out-of-focus look. At the moment I'd definitely go for the former in most cases, since the resolution of fine detail, although a worthy goal, is not top of the list for lens characteristics for me. Fast lenses with limited depth of field where desired and a good "blur" seem to be mostly what I like nowadays. For some stuff maximum resolution might be a priority- but that would be only a small proportion of what I do. If the best lenses always made the best pictures, life would be simple. Joe Berenbaum