Found a nice full size image from a D700 at f/1.4 on flickr from the 50G. ISO 2000 @ 1/60 (It's not a formal test or anything, but it's nice to see none the less) I'm happy with that performance me thinks.
lorriman, do you have much experience with fast 50mm SLR mount lenses?
I ask because the Sigma is an anomaly among them using an new exotic aspherical element design.
While I don't have an extensive collection of large aperture lenses I do have f1.2 and f1.7 normals and a 135/2.5, two of which I purchased for their bokeh, and I have eyes with which to see people's bokeh tests.
In anycase nothing I wrote has anyhting to do with aspheric elements.
Jammy
I think you're expecting 85-200mm like boke from a 50mm lens, which is very very uncommon.
No question that that is what I would like. However my angle here is that the 50 G is bokeh-harsh rather than that it doesn't give perfect bokeh, and isn't acceptable to a portraitist of my kind. It means that I would likely end up favouring Canon for its lenses while regretting the bodies or settle for the Sigma on a Nikon body which I would rather not. Sony and Pentax have harsh normal lenses also, unless one goes way back. A great shame.
What do you think of the Nikon 50mm f1.2 AI-S as compared to these other lenses? I just picked one up yesterday and really like it. The manual focus will take some practice, and it's not the sharpest lens, but the bokeh is creamy soft (at least to my eyes).
L3roy wrote:
What do you think of the Nikon 50mm f1.2 AI-S as compared to these other lenses? I just picked one up yesterday and really like it. The manual focus will take some practice, and it's not the sharpest lens, but the bokeh is creamy soft (at least to my eyes).
This is obliteration bokeh: it makes it difficult to judge. We also don't know anyhting about that background: backgrounds with diffuse objects can look fine on a bokeh-harsh lens, ie. flowers (but not their stalks) or stones etc.
Maybe not exactly 'harsh' but.....the dog's paw is vibrating, the lady is in front of a kind of bokeh hell, and the guy has distinctly unnatural oof areas behind him. I don't think you know what good bokeh looks like. Search for pics from the super takumar 50/1.4. Or go for the ultimate the Nikon 105 DC or Minolta/Sony 135 STF.
I'm curious what makes good bokeh. It seems subjective, but there has to be some objective ways of describing it.
I've always liked the OOF areas in this guy's photos. He shoots mostly film and uses some expensive older lenses. The bokeh in his photos is very pleasing, IMO.
I'm curious what makes good bokeh. It seems subjective, but there has to be some objective ways of describing it.
What constitutes 'good' bokeh is subjective, it's true. That's why I try to discipline myself to using terms such as 'harsh' or 'busy'. In the examples you give they are "swirly" and "bright-ring". All well known phrases. My own feeling is that the majority want their bokeh to be smooth and not distract from the subject, unsurprisingly, which is why those mentioned artifacts are usually considered bad. This is true of me as an environmental portraitist (I take nothing else). I don't just want the background to not distract: I want it to look completely natural, which is why I've gone a step further in my bokeh hunting.
The science of bokeh mostly revolves around spherical aberration, and is measurable. A lens with a little spherical aberration will tend to have smoother bokeh but at the expense of sharpness; so you can imagine why so many lenses don't have such good bokeh. Because it is a science the result is lenses with adjustable spherical aberration (the Nikon DC lenses) or with a special graduated internal filter to compensate for the effect of over-corrected spherical aberration: the Minolta/Sony STF. Spherical Aberration is the most prominent factor, but there are others.
I've always liked the OOF areas in this guy's photos. He shoots mostly film and uses some expensive older lenses. The bokeh in his photos is very pleasing, IMO.
What do you think?
For the kind of photos I take such bokeh would be a disaster, but as photos in their own right they are quite delightful.
Sam Bennett wrote:
Unfortunately that is with my much-beloved old Canon 35mm f/1.4L - so, stopped down. The other lens was the Canon 135mm f/2.L. Both fantastic lenses.
Ach! Too expensive for me.
I actually took some stopped down, but threw them out.
Ouch.
I still can't agree that generally it's "bokeh harsh" - particularly compared to my Nikkor-S Auto 50mm f/1.4, which clearly is - it may not be as smooth as the
Well, maybe bokeh-busy would be more accurate. Either way it's not what I would think of as a bokeh lens. But then I'm just one lone voice among many. he he
Todd, I saw the, uh, "comments" that you got on dpr with that image. I like the shot as a whole and think that you did very well, as usual, with the capture.
I'm not sure about the bokeh of this shot. It's thrown out of focus very nicely, but it's rather a midway point, in that I think the bokeh would likely be better if it were more OOF, or significantly less. IOW, if you and the subject had moved another 5 to 10 feet away from the background, it might look less busy. I tend to think it is just one of those shots where the OOF elements are just the right distance from the subject to render bokeh that is less pleasing than you'd normally see from the lens. I wonder if the sigma would have rendered the scene significantly different. Dunno, it's possible I suppose, but I rather doubt it. I'm sure that the nikon f/1.4d wouldn't have produced better bokeh on this shot.
Personally I wouldn't draw a conclusion from a web-sized image. That's why I've been including full-sized images here. It's hard to know what sort of sharpening people are doing, or what image hosting services are doing unbeknownst to the user (Flickr for instance sharpens resized images by default). The "wrong" sharpening settings can easily make a shot look more busy than it really is.
But that image, as is, certainly looks "busy" to my eye. As usual, the question here is - what would the Sigma do in the same conditions? Just because a lens produces funky results in one situation doesn't mean it would produce funky results in all conditions, and it doesn't mean that another lens wouldn't have the same problem. That, ultimately, is why I'm going to try out the Sigma for myself instead of making grand proclamations one way or the other without direct experience with both lenses.
Hi Sam... You said what would the Sigma do in the same conditions? Just because a lens produces funky results in one situation doesn't mean it would produce funky results in all conditions, and it doesn't mean that another lens wouldn't have the same problem. That, ultimately, is why I'm going to try out the Sigma for myself instead of making grand proclamations one way or the other without direct experience with both lenses.
I think the Sigma will look the same. Why? Because both lenses are of the same FL, 50mm! The longer the lens the smoother the bokeh.
Sam Bennett wrote:
But that image, as is, certainly looks "busy" to my eye. As usual, the question here is - what would the Sigma do in the same conditions? Just because a lens produces funky results in one situation doesn't mean it would produce funky results in all conditions, and it doesn't mean that another lens wouldn't have the same problem. That, ultimately, is why I'm going to try out the Sigma for myself instead of making grand proclamations one way or the other without direct experience with both lenses.
Sam, it would be absolutely marvellous if you could perhaps attempt a reproduction of the above picture with your Sigma at your local bike shop, assuming there is one. Looking at the size of the wheel in the background gives a reasonable idea of how far the background is. Unhappily my exif viewer isn't reporting focus distance but it is a bit basic: perhaps yours does.
Todd wrote:
I think the Sigma will look the same. Why? Because both lenses are of the same FL, 50mm! The longer the lens the smoother the bokeh.
Often true, but not due to focal length. There is a Sigma 18-250 that has very nasty bokeh at 250.
I think you are mixing the degree of outof focus areas with smoothness. You can get the same amount of oof with a 50mm lens as with a 135mm lens if you are willing to stand further back and crop the final image. Of course you won' have many pixels left.
Todd wrote:
My recent Bokeh shot at F/1.6. It looks a bit rough I hear. What do you say?
Really bad.
Would a different lens produce better bokeh? I dont know, but I cant imagine something worse than that. My 50/1.4 AIS would absolutely suck in that particular scene, just as bad as your lens.
The lens has nothing to do with the bokeh in this image. It just so happens to be the "perfect storm", where focal length, aperture, distance between subject and background, plus the way the light is reflecting off the many reflective objects in the background to create the effect you're seeing.
There's nothing wrong with this lens, and IMHO, you'd get the same result from any other fast 50mm.
Anthony8858 wrote:
.....
There's nothing wrong with this lens, and IMHO, you'd get the same result from any other fast 50mm.
Bokeh varies so much with those various factors, and since this lens is a new design I would say that you are guessing. Without proper comparisons I think you need to qualify that with "I reckon that..".
lorriman wrote:
Bokeh varies so much with those various factors, and since this lens is a new design I would say that you are guessing. Without proper comparisons I think you need to qualify that with "I reckon that..".
Hey Guys......
Well bokeh is bokeh! In the end who cares? I never really cared how blurred the BG was in a photo or how it was blurred, I figure if you want great bokeh, then use a 200mm lens wide open! It really comes down to the photo and the sharpness of lens/subject. Most people are going to be looking at the subject and add a comment about the subject, not the BG. As long as the subject is in focus that's all that matters. A blurred BG has only one purpose, to draw attention away from itself and lead the observer to the subject that is IN focus and that is all it does. In the photos below, Jenn & Joel appear to float inthe photo and are strongly separated from the BG, which is blurred nicely. Weather many of you think the new 50mm F/1.4G has bad bokeh or not is irrelevent to me because I like it. It is my favorite lens next to my 85mm F/1.4
Those pics are illustrative of why I wouldn't like such bokeh: it is sufficiently non-neutral that it would take from the atmosphere of the pic. Granted the pics above are not atmosphere pics, so the moderately distracting bokeh isn't really a problem.
I kid.
