Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/06/14

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Serious question about fast lenses
From: Martin Howard <marho@ikp.liu.se>
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 13:14:59 +0200

Christian Payot wrote:
> 
> The bookeh will be better with a 300 mm 2,8 than with a 75-300 mm
> zoom IS at 5,6.
>

Actually, no.  Leaving the fact aside that a prime lens usually exhibits
better bokeh than a zoom, a lens with max aperture of 2.8 will not
necessarily show *better* bokeh than a lens with max aperture of 5.6.
It can, however, exhibit *more*, by virtue of the fact that there will
be more areas which are out of focus.

The term "bokeh" refers to the *quality* of out-of-focus portions of a
shot: not the amount.  Technically, you cannot talk about "more bokeh"
any more than you can talk about one apple having "more shape" than
another: Just focus so that nothing is sharp, and it's all bokeh.

M.

- -- 
Martin Howard, Grad. Schl. for Human-Machine Interaction,  |
HMI/IKP, Linkoping University, SE-581 83 Linkoping, Sweden.|    Just
Tel: +46 13 28 5741; Fax: +46 28 2579; ICQ: 354739         | say "DOOH"
E-mail: marho@ikp.liu.se; www.iav.ikp.liu.se/staff/marho/  +------------