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ebrandon wrote:
The way my brain works, it's seems logical that if someone is going to be in a camera system, they should get the unique-to-the-system lenses. Otherwise what's the point?
So as someone in the alpha/NEX/Minolta/Sony camp, two days ago I got the Sony 135mm f2.8 T4.5 STF (smooth transition focus), or as I call it the 135mm STFU.
Yesterday I used it on an A900 at St. Patrick's day festivities and in San Francisco's Chinatown. And today I tried it in the backyard on the NEX 5N with with the LA-EA2 adapter.
What's better about using it on the A900 is the 135mm effective focal length, the shallower DOF, and the in body IS. What's better about using it on the NEX is the EVF that gains up as you stop down the completely manual aperture ring, the magnified focusing, and the focus peaking.
The lens feels good in the hand on both cameras, but the focal length feels really quite long on the NEX.
Obviously this lens can blur out a background pretty much entirely, and do so nicely.
A900, ~f3.5, T5.6
But that's not the point is it? There are lots of fast lenses that can make the background very out of focus. And those lenses do it with AF, camera aperture control, less size, less weight, less cost.
Here's a recent A900 pic with the Sony 85mm f1.4 @ f2 -- background just as out of focus as anything I can do with the STF.
The point of the STF, I think, is that the out of focus area can be more than just the negative space around the in focus area. The OOF areas can be part of the story, with a beautiful rendering that puts the the foreground & background on an equal footing in carrying the narrative of the picture.
So I tried to LOOK at the areas that would be out of focus and think about their meaning and composition and effect on the image as much as the foreground subject -- knowing that they would be less blurred than they would be with a faster lens, but would be rendered more beautifully (hopefully).
So here's another A900 image at ~f3.5 T5.6. I ordinarily wouldn't like (or take) a picture with cars, door frames and windows coming out of a subject's head, but in this case the logic was "let all that stuff say 'city' and 'street' and trust the lens to make it look non-distracting".
Identical thinking behind this image
Or here's the same logic on the NEX 5N. I deliberately shot this portrait with all kinds of lines and angles converging on my son's head trusting the lens would render them nicely, and that they would add drama instead of distraction to the portrait.
Another A900 example .. I would not have taken this image at this aperture with another lens. I would have either more blurred everything other than the boy, or just not taken the picture given the way subjects are overlapping. But the idea was that the boy would "pop" and that everyone and everything else would be part of picture, slightly out of focus and nicely rendered.
Again, this is a picture which is way too "busy" by ordinary standards, but I thought the STF could handle it. A900 again.
Two more examples of this approach from the NEX 5N. This is not a very successful picture, but the idea was to make the in-focus and out-of-focus areas equally important.
and here (NEX 5N again) the idea was to have the diagonal line separating green & black aligned with the cat's body; and to trust that the out of focus grass at the green/black boundary wouldn't have any distracting doubling etc.
Next up is that this is a very satisfying near-macro lens, close focusing and with well rendered out of focus areas both in front of and behind the plane of focus.
First a sample with the A900
and then one with the NEX 5N
Finally, a picture with no theory -- I just like it. A900.
What do you think?
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I think you should start a thread for this theory, deserves to be explored. The pics are nice too. 
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