Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/03/24

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Subject: [Leica] IMG's plus advice needed - Guy, girl, bokeh
From: tgray at 125px.com (Tim Gray)
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:08:01 -0400
References: <CA487076-52A2-486D-88C5-0DC860728E22@depaul.edu>

Are you referring to the non circular shape of the out of focus
highlights?  If so, that will happen on most large aperture lenses
wide open.  It has to do with the angle of the light is coming in.
Take your lens, look at it off axis (like 25-30 degrees off) and note
that you can't see the full aperture because of the angle.  That will
probably happen with almost any fast 50 you shoot with.

If you are talking about the bright ring on the outer part of the out
of focus highlights, that has to do with lens design and another fast
50 might work better for you.  The Zeiss 50/1.5 might satisfy you.  I
think it has to do with correcting spherical aberration, which the
Zeiss has a lot of, so it has smoother out of focus highlights (behind
the plane of focus).  It also has focus shift :)

I assume you were joking about bokeh being the cause of the lack of
view on the Guy picture :)  I personally like that one more and
wouldn't have really noticed the bokeh, since you have good lighting
and good composition in the photo. 'Distracting' bokeh is only
distracting to me when it is the subject of the picture.

On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 3:59 PM, bob palmieri <rpalmier at depaul.edu> wrote:
> Folks -
>
> After looking at George Lottermoser's wildlife shot on his blog I figured
> I'd post a couple of Humans from last week. ?In contrast to the birds, I
> don't feel like color is particularly necessary for determining gender:
>
> Guy -
>
> http://www.pbase.com/bobsworld/image/110451982
>
> Girl -
>
> http://www.pbase.com/bobsworld/image/110451983
>
> (Feel free to deliver comments, admonishments or jocular banter as needed.)
>
> Both shot with my ?daily M6 - 50 'Lux - Tmax 400 in Xtol rig. ?Used to be
> pretty happy with this setup, but there seems to be an issue that I can no
> longer ignore.
>
> I threw these up a few days ago and noticed that the "Girl" shot gets twice
> as many views as the "Guy" shot. ?Must be the 50 (late spherical) 'lux's
> Lemon Bokeh, which is all over the "Guy" shot.
>
> First of all, I'd like to know what causes this. ?Is it a comatic effect, 
> an
> image of the aperture off-axis or something else? ?I guess it doesn't 
> really
> matter too much, 'cuz it's clearly Here to Stay with this lens design.
>
> I hesitate to bring up a topic such as this, but I'm really interested in
> hearing some opinions on Fast Fiftys for M's.
>
> I basically like almost everything about my late-spherical 50 version.
> ?These aspects include close focussing to 0.7m, terrific ergonomics on the
> very-lightly-damped rings (with the fast-racking helical on the focus ring 
> I
> can beat most autofocus setups in dim light.) ?I wanna know if there's a 
> 1.4
> (or 1.5) 50 that can keep up with most of these qualities (as well as high
> contrast and low flare wide open plus acceptable focus shift ).
>
> The Nocti's are out due to weight and cost. ?The versions of the Leica
> aspherical I've tried had much stiffer focussing (and I probably can't
> afford one of those either.) ?So I guess it's all about Zeiss (new or old),
> Voigtlander and Canon or Nikon LTM's.
>
> But if I can't find something else I may well become a member of the
> Bokeh-After-the Fact club.
>
> Bob Palmieri
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
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>


In reply to: Message from rpalmier at depaul.edu (bob palmieri) ([Leica] IMG's plus advice needed - Guy, girl, bokeh)