[Leica] re: bokeh

[hopsternew at gmail.com (Geoff Hopkinson)]

Marty very thoughtful insights from you.
No argument from me on the two Leica lenses mentioned for extremely good out
of focus rendition!
But others would say 'Oh the new designs lack the smoothness or glow (or
whatever) of the older lenses. For example, the last pre-asph Summicron 35
is often held to be a bo-ke champion. It doesn't appeal to me at all
compared to its asph. replacement. I see a lot of that smoothness as
inability to resolve un-sharp detail, if you like. What I call
under-correction.
So I was saying to the OP, what do you understand by bo-ke or bokeh or
whatever you like to call it. Is it the way that OoF highlights are
rendered? Or the transition from sharp to unsharp or some subjective Leica
quality?
Anyhoo, maybe I'm leaping into too many theoretical threads!
It will be interesting to read what people have to say.



2009/1/20 Marty Deveney <freakscene@weirdness.com>

>
> I've spent too much time thinking about bokeh.  Some random thought follow.
>
> Geoff's comment: "One man's smooth out of focus transition is another man's
> remaining aberrations" is something with which I tend to disagree.  Good 
> oof
> rendition is good oof rendition - you see the residual aberrations
> elsewhere, mostly in the in-focus field.  Some of the best corrected still
> camera lenses currently available (the Leica 50/1.4 asph and 75/2 asphs in
> particular) have extremely good out of focus rendition, as do some
> stunningly, incredibly well corrected cine optics like the Zeiss Ultra 
> Prime
> and Ultra 16 series lenses.  They key seems to be in not over-correcting 
> the
> spherical aberrations, something which makes people perceive lenses as
> 'sharper' in the in-focus areas, as Nikon's 1960s marketing research
> revealed, and subsequently became incorporated into many designs by them 
> and
> others, right up until recently.
>
> I once did a survey to try to figure out what "good bokeh" comprised.  I
> used photographers and a wide selection of non-photographers who were
> available to me.  When I asked my mother to describe which out of focus
> areas she thought were more pleasing she said "but they're all just 
> blurry!"
>  Some people simply don't care.  Two things that people who did care almost
> universally dislike are double lines (ni-sen bokeh) and harsh transitions 
> in
> the oof areas where normally these would be perceived to a person's vision
> as smooth in real life.  They don't seem to mind sharp transitions where
> they would be sharp in life (like lights at night or in dimly lit scenes).
>
> Surveys are not always as useful as marketing research companies would tell
> you.
>
> If you want to use a lens that can provide everything from truly stunning
> to absolutely terrible bokeh, try the Zeiss 35/2.8 Distagon for the Contax
> SLR cameras.  I picked one up with a Yashica SLR for almost nothing and was
> astounded at the way it could provide a series of amazing photos with
> incredibly good bokeh but then it would sometimes produce the most awful
> double line, harsh and sometimes even swirly out of focus rendition.  I've
> also rarely seen a lens whose front-of-focus and behind-focus bokeh were
> more different.  It's an interesting one to experiment with.
>
> A Noctilux in any of its incarnations is also a great lens to experiment
> with for bokeh.  All versions (f1.2, f1 and f0.95) are capable of a great
> range of types and flavours of bokeh.  Highly recommended.
>
> Marty
>
>
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-- 
Cheers
Geoff
Life's too short for slow zooms