What Nice Bokeh Looks Like...

... to me anyway. Like so many other aesthetic concepts, ideas and opinions about lens blur abound, proliferate, grow exponentially. They've been turned up to eleven, Bob Ross-ified, the whole nine yards. Artificial Intelligence, connoisseurs, and 'philes have gotten involved. What the hell is a simple person with a camera gonna do? Moi, I've come up with my own ideas over the years. And, I've learned to keep my dumb thoughts to myself and instead try to let my lenses guide me to a good answer as I shoot. 

 
Works sometimes.

Dendroglyphs

So, I learned a new word to describe the carvings on trees, dendroglyphs. Frankly, I think humans should either give up on carving into the bark of trees or seriously improve their dendroglyph game. Pakito? Really? If you're gonna deface a tree, bro, how about something cool that might be interesting to a passerby in a few decades? Etching your name into a tree is on the same level as getting "Mom" tattooed onto your bicep. But, I digress. I wanted to mention that I tend to favor lenses with mellow boke like the Olympus 25mm f/1.8. Will nuance and sophistication come back into vogue any time soon? 

Have a subtle weekend fellow traveller.

Small. Package. Good. Things.

Sometimes, good things really do come in small packages. Like the tiny Olympus 45mm f/1.8 lens. I've always enjoyed the rendering produced by this cheap and cheerful golfball-sized little lens. Here, in this shot taken on the Appalachian Trail, the focus was on the nearest post. The aperture was f/5.6 and the fall off in focus is just what I was looking for to emphasize the atmospheric perspective. I do rather wish I'd left some more space at the top, but, not to worry, I could easily fix that in Photoshop should MOMA express interest. 

Crappy bokeh...

I don't consider myself a wildlife photographer, but I do really like this image of a dragonfly I made several years ago. The fact is, when I pressed the shutter button, I was not in an exotic location. Nope, I was sitting on the bench next to our koi pond with a cup of coffee and a camera. The lovely green background comes from the murky pond water which is mostly algae and fish shit. Now that's putting bokeh to good use!

Have a pleasant Friday the 13th with good light as well as good bokeh. 
 

Bokeh before bokeh

I was doing some online research on a couple of photographers and came across the work of Chris McCaw. Hadn’t looked at this work in a while. Later, I saw some party lights hanging from trees and decided to play around with bokeh. The out of focus lights were following a curved trajectory that reminded me of the moon a little. People have become obsessed with bokeh in recent years, but it’s worth remembering that photographers have played with it for ages. I remember as a kid in the pre-internet days reading an article in a photography magazine that instructed you to spritz a little water on a UV filter and then place the filter in the freezer for half an hour before putting it back onto your lens and shooting Christmas lights. I remember being amazed at the results a couple weeks later when I got my film back from the drugstore. 

Fancy fifty > nifty 50?

As much as I love my nifty fifty, if I am honest, I have to admit that my fancy fifty is also pretty freaking awesome. Shooting wide open at f/1.2 sure can be fun, especially with modern autofocus systems. It kind of takes most of the pressure off, knowing that your camera has your back and at least something is going to be sharp. If you noodle around a bit, you can probably get enough well focused images to cover yourself. We are certainly spoiled for choice these days. Anyway, I am glad to be able to own one state-of-the-art lens along with all my cheap as chips legacy glass. It is an important calibration point for me.

A rose from a friend’s garden

When I graduated from high school I thought I might become a physician. That concept lasted for about a month, if that long. But I took a number of biology courses my first year, my absolute favorite being botany. I did really well in the class, but I had the unfortunate knack of killing most of the plants I came into contact with. So I’m always impressed when folks I know are accomplished gardeners. Over the weekend, some friends came over for tea and brought one of the last roses of the season. It was on its last legs and the petals started dropping right away. I liked seeing the patch of color where petals were in the vase. The fluorescent coloration of the flower was captured accurately by the Pentax KP. I was using the wonderful 35mm macro lens set at f/8. 

Mamiya Monday...

When I started collecting old film cameras a decade or so ago, they were literally as cheap as chips. These days, of course, this is absolutely no longer the case, with coveted film cameras going for multiple thousands of dollars. Especially, it seems, a very particular panoramic camera and certain medium format models. It's all a bit crazy. At any rate, the first medium format camera I added to my collection was the Mamiya 645 1000S, which set me back a whopping $50. To be clear, I mean fifty bucks for the entire set-up, including a lens. I still remember shooting my first roll, thinking to myself that this was the bargain of the century. And, it really is a very enjoyable camera to shoot with. Over time, I've added the 50mm shift lens and the rather unique 80mm f/1.9 lens to my kit. When shooting the 80mm wide open at f/1.9, the depth of field is vanishingly small (totally impractical, honestly) and the bokeh can be, shall we say, a bit disorienting. That said, many photographers (I know of at least one) are connoisseurs of unusual lens properties, including weird bokeh. And, with the 50mm shift lens, you can stitch together two or three frames for a very nice panoramic photograph.

Brittle and crystalline

As I was climbing down from the hiking path to stand on a granite boulder, I reached out for something to stabilize myself and noticed this dead tree trunk. It looked brittle and I sensed it would be a bad idea to grab onto it because it would likely shatter under my weight. I also immediately knew that I wanted to photograph it. Not so much to create a work of art as to make a visual note to myself. A sketch if you will. At any rate, what I want to remember is how the wood looks petrified and crystalline, with an almost cubic structure. I was also pretty happy with the bokeh under these particular conditions.

Bokeh ennui?

 

My father was stationed in Asia during his long stint in the U.S. Army. He brought home a large number of tchotchkes from his travels, and these objects became part of what my brother and I experienced every day growing up. In fact, we both still have a few of these items among our own possessions, like this old buddha from Thailand. I have an old Leitz 90mm f/2.5 Colorplan projector lens that I purchased to use with my 4x5 camera. I did not like the look this lens produced on large format film all that much, so now I am slowly but surely adapting it for use on a digital camera instead. In the meantime, I've tried capturing a few images by 'freelensing' with it. With a fixed f/2.5 aperture at 90mm, the blur is pretty intense, especially close up.

I keep thinking that photographers will grow bored with bokeh, but I have my doubts. The other day, I ordered some fresh salmon from a local merchant. He sent me a picture of a platter of whole fish taken using portrait mode on his phone. Damn fine looking fish against a blurry background. I definitely bought a couple filets. 

Sonnar salutations

Knocking out a couple of sun salutations is a good way to get your juices flowing in the morning. Lately, a couple of lovely Zeiss Sonnar lenses have been waking up some of my photographs. The basic Sonnar lens design was developed at Zeiss in 1930 and the name derives from Sonne, German for sun.

The image of the cypress foliage was captured using the Zeiss Sonnar 100 mm f/3.5 lens mounted on a Contax ST. The film stock was Lomography Berlin and processing was done in a monobath, because why not? Interestingly, I think the negatives came out better using the monobath than when processed using separate solutions. At any rate, this is a really terrific lens that punches above its weight, and like most slowish lenses is cheap as chips. In addition to a pleasant rendering overall, good sharpness, a flat field, the bokeh is pretty spectacular too. Pairs well with digital sensors in addition to analog.

In praise of vintage glass

One of the attractive things about mirrorless digital cameras is the possibility of mounting a wide range of lenses, including vintage glass from the so-called film era. I thought it would be interesting to compare modern and vintage glass mounted on a Foveon sensor camera, just to see if this is an area that I might want to explore in more detail going forward. 

It is worth noting that the quirky design of the Sigma sd Quattro, with its rather long flange-to-sensor distance, excludes many possible vintage lenses from the get go, which is kind of a drag, but luckily you can just barely accommodate the old M42 mount lenses with the wafer thin M42-Sigma lens adapter. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these lenses to choose from, but our victim this time around is the Pentax Takumar 35 mm f/2 from the early 1960s. I had just picked up a copy of this early wide angle lens and was keen to give it a test drive. Modern Sigma glass is highly regarded, and I am lucky to have the 70 mm f/2.8 macro Art lens at my disposal. So those are the two lenses we will discuss today.

I enjoy shooting the crab apple blossoms each year. They are convenient and beautiful subjects and the foliage in the background means bokeh will be plentiful. The Foveon sensor has a way of making the petals of flowers look like they are made of paper. It's an effect that I like. Despite the artful rendition, the lens is a very modern design and that is reflected in the image, too. Most objectionable aberrations are well controlled, the color is accurate, and the bokeh is pleasing to the eye.

Taken to the cleaner

Once I'd decided that the Rolleiflex SL66 was a keeper, I started thinking about picking up some additional lenses and building up a small kit. One lens that I'd read about and wanted to own was the 120 mm f/5.6 S-Planar. The S in the name of the lens indicates that its optical design is optimized for close-up imaging. So, I hopped over to my favorite auction site to see what was available, and grabbed a copy that was described as excellent with a bunch of plusses. 

To test out my new lens, I took a few shots of plants around the house. 

The first image was taken with a reference lens, the 80 mm f/2.8. Everything looks just fine here. You may notice the pentagonal bokeh in the background. That is due to the fact that the iris itself has five straight blades. The out of focus highlights in the background have the same shape as the lens aperture. Modern lenses tend to have more aperture blades and they also may be curved a bit to mitigate this effect which many might find distracting. Me, I'm fine with it most of the time.

If it ain't bokeh...

Frankly, I don't shoot enough with the Mamiya C330, but it always gives good results when I do break it out. At the time this photograph was made, my beloved Rolleiflex SL66 was in California being repaired, so I was putting some clicks on my other cameras. Anyway, the Sekor 105 mm is new to me and I have to admit that I have been captivated by the bokeh it can produce, as illustrated with this photograph. Funny how the most interesting bokeh comes from old lenses that were designed before bokeh was such a thing! This image was captured on Ilford Delta 3200 rated at 1000 and developed in HC-110 for 8 min.