Bokeh- 35 lux vs 50 lux -Newest versions

[JPizzzle]

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Hey all,

Can anyone who has both give me some opinions on the bokeh-I know it's subjective and am fine with opinions/non-scientific data. I have a 50 lux asph, but was curious on how the 35 lux would compare. Thanks!!

 

JP

[RockyIII]

I have used the 50mm Summilux but not the 35. Somebody may correct me, but the 50mm definitely has a shallower depth of field wide open and a creamier bokeh.

 

Rocky

[01af]

As with nearly all lenses, the Summilux-M 35 mm Asph and Summilux-M 50 mm Asph have their nicest bokehs when stopped down just a bit—even just half a stop makes for a significant improvement. At full aperture, bokeh is not at its best in both lenses ... and then, slightly worse (busier, less smooth) in the 35 mm.

 

That does not mean the Summilux-M 35 mm Asph's bokeh was bad at full aperture—it isn't. Still, it can use some improvement, and that's what it (or any lens) gets when stopping down.

 

By the way, stopping down from, say, f/1.4 to f/2 will reduce the degree of background blur mostly at the frame's center but much less so at the frame's borders due to vignetting. So when the center is basically filled with your in-focus main subject and the out-of-focus background appears only at the frame's borders then it won't make much of a difference in terms of background blur whether you're shooting wide open or slightly stopped down ('slightly' means, not more than, say, 1 or 1.5 stops down from wide open).

[lars_bergquist]

I have both lenses. Both have smoother bokeh than their predecessor lenses, simply because one of the most important factors that degrade bokeh is spherical aberration, and both ASPH versions have less SA. The 35mm Summilux has smoother bokeh in fact than the old 'bokeh king', the v.4 Summicron (I have that lens too). But creamiest of them all is the 50mm Summilux ASPH.

 

Given the same focal length and subject distance (= same reproduction ratio) the d.o.f. depends only on the size of the exit pupil, i.e. the aperture. So two 50mm lenses have the same d.o.f. at the same aperture. Now modern lenses are simply sharper and show more fine subject detail in the plane of best sharpness. So the difference between 'very sharp' and 'fairly sharp' has grown, and that has led to both complaints about less d.o.f. and of 'worse bokeh'. But d.o.f. as such does not change because that is a geometrical fact of life, and bokeh is about the unsharp parts of the image and not the sharp part.

 

Personally, I like sharp lenses better than fuzzy ones.

 

The old man from when sharper was better

[01af]

Given the same focal length and subject distance (= same reproduction ratio) the depth-of-field depends only on the size of the exit pupil ...

Didn't we have this topic just three weeks ago?

 

At a given image format, focal length, and focus distance, the exit pupil is the most important factor for depth-of-field but not the only one.

 

 

... i. e. the aperture.

Aperture and exit pupil are not the same thing. Aperture and entry pupil are.

 

 

So two 50 mm lenses have the same depth-of-field at the same aperture.

No, they haven't. Their depths-of-field can be noticably different.

 

 

Now modern lenses are simply sharper and show more fine subject detail in the plane of best sharpness. So the difference between 'very sharp' and 'fairly sharp' has grown, and that has led to both complaints about less depth-of-field and of 'worse bokeh'. But depth-of-field as such does not change because that is a geometrical fact of life, and bokeh is about the unsharp parts of the image and not the sharp part.

You featured this thesis before, and it's still wrong. Worse yet, it has nothing to do with our current question.

[asmith]

Personally, I find the attractiveness or otherwise of the unsharp areas of an image depends much more on the subject matter than on the lens characteristics. I therefore am fairly uninterested in the whole question of the bokeh of particular lenses. For me, all modern Leica lenses are more than satisfactory for making photographs. I mainly use the latest 35 and 50 Summiluxes and am happy with them.

Alwyn

[01af]

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Personally, I find the attractiveness or otherwise of the unsharp areas of an image depends much more on the subject matter than on the lens characteristics.

That's right.

 

What most people forget when talking about bokeh and the merits of lenses is that bokeh primarily is not a property of a lens but first and foremost a property of a picture. The bokeh of a photograph—which, by the way, is not the degree of blur of the of-out-focus areas but the aesthetic quality thereof—depends on a wealth of factors, the most important being structure and contrast of the background, distance of the background from the plane of focus, etc ... and also what the lens makes of it. So the out-of-focus rendition of the lens is a factor but not the most important one, much less the only one.

 

It's similiar to lens sharpness ... we photographers appreciate sharp lenses but the quality of a photograph depends on many factors, of which lens sharpness is just a minor one. We also appreciate lenses with nice out-of-focus renditions—but for the bokeh of a photograph, the contribution of the lens is of secondary significance (still not totally insignificant).

[JPizzzle]

Lots of good info here. Thanks guys!