[Leica] IMG: Bokeh?

[benedenia at gmail.com (Marty Deveney)]

I have to disagree with Ted on this one.  These photos show exactly why bad
bokeh can be distracting and decrease the easthetic quality and impact of a
photo; and the colours have only a very little to do with it.

Some lenses with bad out-of-focus rendition - and I include the 35 asph
Summilux among those, make objects on the OOF areas more andgular and harsh,
not less, the more out-of-focus (o-o-f) they get.  This is a travel shot, so
it's hard to turn it into a lens test, but had Tina shot this same scene
with the C-V 35/1.2, the background would be a lot less distracting for two
reasons - the hard, angular shapes in the o-o-f would be replaced in the oof
areas by soft-edges where the objects appear smaller than they do here, and
the contrast and saturation in the OOF areas would be lower.  The newer
Leica asph lenses have better bokeh and lower contrast transmission than the
earlier ones - I suspect that they also think they got a little carried away
with things when they designed the first few.

My 35/1.4 asph provides me with photos like this often enough to make me
regularly think about offering it FS on Friday.

Marty