Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/11/23
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> Mike, > > So, what's _your_ rating for the lenses you've tested (bearing in mind that > this is largely subjective)? What are your grades for the Leica line-up > (since I only have one that I own to test, and no access to others (no > rentals in Balto./DC area)? > > Interested, > Dan Dan, No lens is perfect. As far as bokeh is concerned, you have to decide first if it's even _in_ your pictures (some people don't do that kind of photography), second if you like it or object to it (some people seem almost offended by out-of-focus areas in pictures, an attitude that truly perplexes me), and third--assuming your pictures have bokeh in them and you aren't offended by that fact--what "look" you tend to like. For me, there's more of a tendency for pictures to be ruined by rotten bokeh than for pictures to be improved by good bokeh. The point of "good" bokeh for me is to get backgrounds and foregrounds unobtrusively out of the way of the picture, and only very secondarily to perhaps create interesting washes of color or tone, and then only in certain cases. I have one friend who spent years deliberately exploring bokeh as an integral part of his photographic artwork, but I personally don't do that. As far as ranking lenses is concerned, most Nikon lenses suck to varying degrees (better to keep everything in focus if you shoot Nikkor!) although a few are pretty good. Most Canons are pretty good. (You can page through an issue of _Sports Illustrated_ and tell what kind of camera the photographers shoot by looking at the bokeh of the long lenses. I can tell N. vs. C. a mile away.) Leica lenses vary, from very good to just okay. That 75mm M is great, and so is the pre-ASPH 35mm Summicron if stopped down a bit. A Canon lens that is superb is the older 100mm EF macro. The EF 50/1.4 is very good too, although it's unpredictably flarey and I don't personally like that. As a general rule, most 35mms are okay (even the AF Nikkor 35mm f/2 is not too bad) and most 50mms are problematic (with some exceptions...although I personally like the Summarit better than the Noctilux, both are good). Assuming you actively _like_ bokeh (and please, no flames--believe me, I'm well aware that some people don't care), the absolute killer lenses for out-of-this-world bokeh are Rodenstocks--specifically the Apo-Sironar-S line. All of them I've seen or used are marvelous. I have a friend who shoots 6x9 with a short Rodenstock view camera lens just for the bokeh. <s> I'd personally never shoot a particular focal length, format, or brand of camera just for the bokeh, though I do avoid lenses that have bokeh that consistently annoys me. Photography is all aesthetics for me. A picture is as good as it looks. Only a handful of photographers don't suck, and only a handful of their photographs don't suck. Which doesn't leave much. That makes it kind of annoying when an otherwise great picture is ruined by tizzy or ni-sen (double-line) bokeh in the o-o-f areas simply because the photographer has never bothered to look at the out-of-focus areas of his or her pictures or never tried different lenses to see what they do. We saw a lot of this when it started to be fashionable (sorry, "hot") among advertising photographers to use a lot of o-o-f, a dozen years ago or so. Many of them shot bad lenses with jarring o-o-f effects, completely insensitive to the visual effect they were copycatting. Lens connoisseurship is not at all a prerequisite for being a good photographer, and I admit that I'm a lens connoisseur. My favorite lenses are those that achieve a balance of properties without any standout flaws, and if that includes a lack of standout virtues, that's okay with me. (I like the look of black-and-white 35mm pictures--in fact I prefer that look to all others--and am not obsessed with getting them to look like medium-format pictures.) So the lenses I like best maybe don't have "perfect" bokeh, but that's okay--I accept imperfection if the overall balance is good. - --Mike