[Leica] Wow, the last word on Bokeh, from Zeiss

[passaro.vince at gmail.com (Vince Passaro)]

Marty--
Watch out. I foresee doctrinal trouble.
V

On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 7:02 PM, Marty Deveney <benedenia at gmail.com> 
wrote:

> The newer asph lenses - the 50 Summilux, 75 Summicron, 21 & 24
> Summiluxes and the 0.95 Nocti have what Doug Herr refers to aptly as
> neutral bokeh.  The 35s, the 21 and 24 2.8s and the 90 AA have what I
> would call harsh bokeh.  The 28 is somewhere in between.  I don't have
> them all, but I currently have 4 and I've used them all, including
> specific testing for bokeh.
>
> References to the 50 1.4 asph being harsh are usually only in
> comparison to the previous versions.  It seems particularly hard to
> design a good 50 with good out of focus rendition.  The nicest are the
> seven element Summicrons, and, outside Leica land, the Planar types
> where the doublets have curved surfaces, not cemented flat surfaces -
> the Pentax 50 1.4s are like this, as are a pile of other, lesser known
> lenses.  But they're no use on a Leica M.
>
> Bokeh is subjective and doesn't matter to some people, but I like my
> out of focus areas to be smooth.  I also don't like the focus feel on
> the newer Leica lenses with floating elements, but not badly enough to
> drive me away from them completely, as it did to at least one LuGger a
> few years ago.
>
> Marty
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 5:51 AM, Jeff Moore <jbm at jbm.org> wrote:
> > 2010-04-14-11:44:40 Tim Gray:
> >> So which Leica ASPH lenses have 'harsh' bokeh?  Particularly when
> >> compared to their pre-ASPH ancestors.
> >
> > I remember soon after I got my 35mm Summilux ASPH (around 15 years
> > ago, maybe?) looking at a picture I'd taken with it and really wishing
> > I'd had my 35mm Summicron on the camera at the time instead.  It was a
> > photo with a person in the foreground and some tree leaves in the
> > background, and the partly-out-of-focus leaves had created a
> > hard-edged "jangly" geometric pattern which I found really distracting
> > and annoying, drawing attention away from the primary subject.
> >
> > Did I stop using the lens?  Oh, no -- because it's so good at
> > rendering crisp detail of things in focus, and its worst-looking bokeh
> > turns out to occur in a way which really jumps out and slaps you in
> > only a small minority of conditions.  It's continued to be one of my
> > most-used lenses, especially on the M8.  But... the older 35 Summicron
> > never did that kind of stuff as it went out of focus.  It was also
> > never nearly as detailed, especially somewhere near wide open.
> >
> >  -Jeff
> >
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>
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