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 p.5 #3 · Nikon 35mm f/1.4G Image Thread | |
Bohemien wrote:
The problem is that for that term a commonly agreed definition doesn't exist. So I can only tell you what I mean when I use it. It's how the lens "draws" the picture. It's nothing you can put your finger on, more like a subjective perception about how the images taken with a lens look. I had the Sigma Art and exchanged it for the 35G, because I liked the 35G's rendering better, the Sigma images surely were nice and sharp and had less CA, but they looked - for lack of a better term - "clinical" to me.
Measurable lens differences are sharpness across the frame, CAs and distortion, of course these also contribute to the overall "rendering" of the lens. It's just that pictures taken with certain lenses (the 200 f/2 springs to mind) have a "desirable quality" that can't be measured, thus we use the term rendering.
About the "nervous" part, that is clearly visible. This refers to the quality of the background blur, and is often found in cheaper and older lens designs. The bokeh balls seem to have a rim (or "outline") to them (also called "onion-bokeh"). This leads to the OOF backgrounds looking, well, "nervous" instead of creamy, smooth, buttery, however you name it. Here's an example of mine with a nervous background, or another one.
Now "nervous" bokeh is not bad per se and can be used as a creative tool. In the second shot I linked, I used it deliberately. Older russian lenses with nervous bokeh have become quite the fashion recently, look here for an example.
Opposed to that, for portraits often "smooth", "creamy" or "buttery" bokeh is desired, because it separates the subject from the background without drawing attention to the background. Look e.g. here or here for examples of pictures with a smooth background, although there's a lot of details in the background. That's due to the lens rendering the backround differently, so you don't get a mix of outlined bokeh balls, instead the colors seem to blend together and create smooth areas.
Markus...Show more →
OK, that is a fair explanation. In just about every case where people have issues with the bokeh, I have seen them refer to it as that specifically, rather than the larger category of rendering, which seems to cover much more than just bokeh. If you had stated nervous bokeh, I would have had no doubt what you were saying. Applying that specific description to a more conceptual term is what threw me a little.
I guess the confusing part to me in the past is that the term rendering often gets used as if it were a measurable, like when someone says "a Zeiss lens has unmatched rendering, that's a proven fact", when in all reality, rendering is very subjective and very much a personal taste.
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Great lens, love mine.
