How To Get Good Bokeh
Posted: Tue 13 Feb 2018, 08:26
I have recently published a series of pictures featuring out of focus areas taken with a Helios 44M lens which cost a grand total of £23, a £15 eBay bid and a slightly exorbitant £8 for postage.* If I had been really serious about getting good bokeh, I would have spent a bit more. £10, 227 to be precise. That is the cost, less £23, of Leica's new 75 Noctilux f/1.25 lens.
The ironic thing is at that maximum aperture, it is almost possible to focus accurately using the rangefinder of the Leica M cameras for which it is designed. The best method is to use focus peaking which means either mounting the optional Visoflex EVF on a Leica M or M10, or using a body with a built in EVF. In the video embedded into an article on DPReview, a photographer has done the latter and shot the lens on a Leica SL. That camera still has by far and away the best EVF I have ever seen. The results from the lens are superb and exceed those I got from the Helios 44M. Are they 450 times better, which is the order of magnitude in price difference? Probably not.
One thing which the photographer did find was that the lens was easier to focus wide open than stopped down, even taking increased depth of field into account. The reason being that he did not find the focus peaking to be so accurate at smaller apertures. That is a phenomenon which I have noticed when mounting a manual focus lens on my Fuji X-E2. With the lens stopped down, the increased depth of field causes the focus peaking to indicate more of the scene being sharp and it is harder to determine the true point of focus. Some people complain that focus peaking is inaccurate and I have long suspected that is the reason why. It is better, albeit more fiddly, to focus wide open and then stop down. Anyway, that is today's tip for anyone considering the use of adapted lenses.
https://www.dpreview.com/videos/2967821 ... f1-25-lens
Even if you do not look at the entire video, it is worth looking at the first few seconds just to see the photographer's hat. Cool it ain't.
* Neither was delivery particularly quick. The seller missed the projected delivery date by several days and waited over a week to dispatch it. Nor did they respond to my enquiry when the lens did not arrive within a reasonable period.
The ironic thing is at that maximum aperture, it is almost possible to focus accurately using the rangefinder of the Leica M cameras for which it is designed. The best method is to use focus peaking which means either mounting the optional Visoflex EVF on a Leica M or M10, or using a body with a built in EVF. In the video embedded into an article on DPReview, a photographer has done the latter and shot the lens on a Leica SL. That camera still has by far and away the best EVF I have ever seen. The results from the lens are superb and exceed those I got from the Helios 44M. Are they 450 times better, which is the order of magnitude in price difference? Probably not.
One thing which the photographer did find was that the lens was easier to focus wide open than stopped down, even taking increased depth of field into account. The reason being that he did not find the focus peaking to be so accurate at smaller apertures. That is a phenomenon which I have noticed when mounting a manual focus lens on my Fuji X-E2. With the lens stopped down, the increased depth of field causes the focus peaking to indicate more of the scene being sharp and it is harder to determine the true point of focus. Some people complain that focus peaking is inaccurate and I have long suspected that is the reason why. It is better, albeit more fiddly, to focus wide open and then stop down. Anyway, that is today's tip for anyone considering the use of adapted lenses.
https://www.dpreview.com/videos/2967821 ... f1-25-lens
Even if you do not look at the entire video, it is worth looking at the first few seconds just to see the photographer's hat. Cool it ain't.
* Neither was delivery particularly quick. The seller missed the projected delivery date by several days and waited over a week to dispatch it. Nor did they respond to my enquiry when the lens did not arrive within a reasonable period.