Re: [Leica] Bokeh controversy

[Martin Howard <howard.390@osu.edu>]

Dan Honemann offered the challenge:

> Okay, so what are your favorite bokeh lenses?

I haven't owned that many lenses, but from personal experience and looking
at photographs shot with known lenses (assuming no lies in the sources) that
I haven't owned I'd say that the list includes (in no particular order):

    Nikon 105mm f/2.5 second version
    Leica 35mm f/2 Summicron 8-element (first version?)
    Leica 35mm f/2.8 and f/3.5 Summarons
    Leica M 50mm f/1.4 Summilux
    Leica M 50mm f/2 Summicron (DR generation)
    Leica R 60mm f/2.8 Macro-Elmarit
    Leica R 80mm f/1.4 Summilux
    Leica R 90mm f/2.8 Elmarit (first generation)
    Leica M 90mm f/2.0 Summicron (first generation)
    Leica R 135mm f/2.8 Elmarit
    Contax 85mm f/1.4 SLR lens (several people have claimed that it's
        worth buying a Contax SLR just for the bokeh of this single
        lens alone!)
    Contax 135mm f/2.8 SLR lens

As a general rule, long and wide tele-lenses seem to have smoother bokeh in
general (I'm thinking of 300mm f/2.8, 400mm f/2.8, 400mm f/4, 600mm f/4,
etc).  I guess it has something to do with the lens designs.

Another general rule appears to be that lenses with a symmetrical (or near
symmetrical) design produce smoother bokeh.  Often, focal lenghts around
50-85mm will be such a design (and older 35s).  The early 90mm Elmarit-R was
a (near?) symmetrical design.  Yet, the 135mm Elmarit is not, but has
wonderfully smooth tonal qualities in the OOF parts of an image (check out
Doug Herr's page on it, or Skip Bolen's Jazz photography with that lens).

The 75mm f/1.4 Summilux-M is an interesting beast.  Sometimes is looks
fabulous, other times the bokeh is not too brilliant.  I think it is
sensitive to the kind of background: broken leaves do not seem to fare well.
The 75mm f/2.5 Voigtländer looks interesting, from seeing some of Johnny B's
(or D's) shots in Human Traffic.  Again, it appears to be somewhat sensitive
to the background.

Zooms are trickier.  They generally seem to exhibit more complex bokeh (not
necessarily "double-eyed", but certainly not smooth) than prime lenses.
However, what I've seen of shots from the Contax SLR and Leica R zooms, they
seem to have particularly nice bokeh, approaching that of good primes.

If I recall correctly, medium-tele (80-135mm) Canon FD primes have pretty
good bokeh (the fast ones, that is), and the current crop of fast EOS
mid-tele primes seem reasonably OK -- but not up to Leica R or Contax SLR
standards.

Nikon doesn't seem to know it exists, or care about it.  Their lenses appear
to be hit-and-miss.  They recently released two lenses with "defocus
control", the 105mm f/2 and 135mm f/2, which supposedly allows you to alter
the quality of the OOF parts of the image.  I haven't used them.  Their 85mm
f/1.4 reportedly has nice bokeh, what I've seen of the 60mm macro looks
pretty good, but general consensus has it that the 105mm f/2.5 is the best
they've ever produced with regard to bokeh.  Superb portrait lens.  Wish I
could get it in Leica R mount.

Minolta issued a lens somewhere around the 135mm focal length with a
"soft-focus" or "defocus" control.  Their approach is much more low-tech
than Nikons, and actually rather clever.  They include a second aperture in
the lens design, one that dims the edges of the OOF discs -- producing a
gradual fall-off of light intensity towards the edge of the disc.  Smart.
I've seen shots (albeit in magazines) that look pretty good with it.
Minolta's G series of SLR AF lenses also seem to fare pretty well (what
little I've seen of it: no-one seems to use Minolta these days).

In MF, Bronica seems to fair better than Hasselblad, despite the latter
being Zeiss.  I can't explain it, I'm just reporting what I've seen after
pouring over images from the two lens systems for hours on end.

Bad examples of bokeh (if you like smooth bokeh) are exhibited by:

    Nikon AIS/AF 50mm f/1.4
    Hasselblad 150mm f/4 Sonnar (yeah -- used for portraits, I know ;)
    Voightländer 50mm f/1.5 Nokton (I put an 'h' in the name specifically
        for Marc James Small's enjoyment ;)
    Pretty much any consumer-grade f/4-f/5.6 SLR zoom from Nikon

M.

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Martin Howard                     | iCon          iDole       iRate
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