This plus the Sigma 9 blades VS Plena's 11 blades makes a difference. The expanded image circle does as well. Also the modern ASPH Grinding and polishing to reduce texture and onion rings in the Plena makes a difference. Of course this is also not unique to the Plena. There are other lenses out there that have those nice smooth rounded Bokeh balls out to the edges.
Such as?
The only ones I am aware of are some older Sony lenses that use an internal filter, but the aperture of these lenses is typically f5.6 which makes them a lot less valuable for many use cases.
The Plena is the only bright lens I am aware of with smooth rounded bokeh balls across most of the frame.
Cheers,
Bernard
Such bookek exists in current very bright lenses as well. I like the look of Plena images so I tested a bit.
Should I post a sample on a Nikon forum? Or will people get upset about that?
Hi,
I know you didn't ask me, but, I am curious to learn what other lens have such Bokeh capability / characteristics. How about, you can start a new thread, so the Plena image thread stays as more or less just that ? Just a thought.
Luka
Thanks for the suggestion Luka. But I fear a full thread dedicated to that would be even more upseting to many.
Steve
You could start by telling us what lenses you are talking about?
Cheers,
Bernard
Let's try it this way Bernard. I will post a link to a post I made regarding this in another forum using just one current lens that you are also a fan of I believe. It has two images in different styles with slightly different intent , but both shot with the intent of having round smooth Bokeh balls.
If seeing an image made with a system that starts with an "S" somehow offends you, I suggest you don't click the link.
So you stopped down from 1.2 to f2 and cropped the image to achieve a similar look. I think we were all expecting SOOC images. But that's an interesting approach.
Only on the portrait image. I wanted to stop down to 1.8 like the Plena, but the DOF was too narrow for the portrait I was making so I went to 2.0 for that. The plan to crop was from the beginning. It was meant to simulate having an enlarged image circle like the Plena does. That is a form of built in cropping of the image circle. So yest that was a part of the plan.
But as you can see from the second image, on this lens cropping is not even really required to achieve very smooth, rounded bokeh balls. That second image in not coped at all. I was pleasantly surprised by that.
I was surprised by that as well. Those adjustments would be a good way to change the character of the bokeh if you had that look in mind.
I do have to ask, are you positive the second picture was at 1.2? It looks eerily similar to lenstip’s 1.8 bokeh samples and you can see some polygonal shape where wide open should be perfectly round. For example, here is cameralabs example of f/1.2 with the 50GM. I’m trying to understand why such a difference?
Feel free to PM me. Don’t want to derail this image thread any more.
Oct 26, 2023 at 12:22 PM
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