[Leica] IMG's plus advice needed - Guy, girl, bokeh (Tim Gray)

[rpalmier at depaul.edu (bob palmieri)]

On Mar 24, 2009, Tim Gray wrote:

> 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.

Yeah... the overall shape thing made me think about the image of the  
physical aperture from an off-axis point of view.

Thing is... I'm wondering why I haven't seen it in any snaps I've  
shot with other fast lenses; I'm gonna hafta try to smoke it out of  
some of the other glass in the closet.

>
> 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 :)

Yeah... that excessive focus shift business can be a dealbreaker.

>
> I assume you were joking about bokeh being the cause of the lack of
> view on the Guy picture :)

Yeah...

Bob Palmieri