photo session – Jess B – various 85mm lenses

A fast 85mm lens is an essential addition to any camera bag, whether an f1.8 or f1.4  or even an f1.2 aperture. With their shallow depth of field, and the pleasant perspective for portraits (when not used with a super-tight composition), these lenses will have your subject just pop from the background.

Jessica and I are busy with a new project – testing various 85mm lenses – specifically for how their bokeh appears in comparison. It is proving a tad more difficult than I had hoped for to show when poor bokeh is truly distracting, and when a lens with great bokeh is immediately superior. But then, the deep-freeze temperatures here recently hasn’t helped us either in scouting for locations. But we’ll still get there. (So this is not the comparative review yet.)

In the meantime, I wanted to show a few images off. They were all shot at wide apertures, using only the available light wherever we were.

The photograph above was taken on the steps inside a train station, using only the available light streaming in. In posing Jessica, I made sure that the direction of light made sense in creating open light on her face.
1/250 @ f1.4 @ 800 ISO
Canon 5D mk II (B&H);  Canon 85mm f1.2 II (B&H)

1/250 @ f1.4 @ 400 ISO
Sony Alpha A-900 (B&H); Sony 85mm f/1.4 Carl Zeiss Planar T* (B&H)

The Sony 85mm f1.4 which is a Zeiss design, was an impressive lens.
The lens has a solid feel and is super-sharp with smooth bokeh.

1/320 @ f1.4 @ 400 ISO
Sony Alpha A-900 (B&H); Sony 85mm f/1.4 Carl Zeiss Planar T* (B&H)

The Sony A-900 showed more noise than I’d ideally like, but with 24 megapixels to play with, and noise-reduction in post-processing, it wasn’t something that would be a problem for most photography.

1/4000 @ f1.2 @ 200 ISO
Canon 5D mk II (B&H);  Canon 85mm f1.2 II (B&H)

With bright highlights as the sun reflected off the leaves in the background, this lens is just incredible in the look it gives to any image.

1/400 @ f1.4 @ 800 ISO
Nikon D3 (B&H);  Nikon 85mm f1.4G (B&H)

1/500 @ f1.4 @ 800 ISO
Nikon D3 (B&H);  Nikon 85mm f1.4G (B&H)

1/320 @ f1.8 @ 400 ISO
Nikon D3 (B&H);  Nikon 85mm f1.4G (B&H)

I love this photo! But it really needs to be viewed as a much larger image to see how this lens renders the transition from sharp to out of focus.

I under-exposed this photograph when I took it, and it needed to be bumped up by a stop in post-processing … just in case someone is trying to figure out the relative brightness of the interior of the train station here. Sometimes the camera settings don’t tell you much about the actual exposure.

1/320 @ f1.8 @ 400 ISO
Nikon D3 (B&H);  Nikon 85mm f1.4G (B&H)

The photographs had some post-processing done to them – skin retouching, and a milder version of my usual retouching for portraits. No dodging & burning or local corrections though.  I do want the photographs here to be representative of what these lenses do.

While the photographic composition is simple for these images, I wanted to show just how effective these lenses can be for their shallow depth-of-field and the way the background blurs. So, whether an f1.8 or faster, you need one!

B&H affiliate link to the lenses used here:

Sony 85mm f/1.4 Carl Zeiss Planar T* (B&H)

Canon 85mm f1.2 II (B&H)

Nikon 85mm f1.4G (B&H)

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creating a background with narrow depth-of-field & great bokeh

I met up with my favorite model Anelisa yesterday in New York, specifically to shoot images for a more extensive review of the Nikon 85mm f1.4G AF-S lens. And then it struck me how pointless it is in a way. This is truly a superb lens. It improves on the legendary Nikon 85mm f1.4 AF-D lens in some key areas. (For me the updated lens was an immediate upgrade.)

But ultimately, you could get similarly beautiful images with any short portrait lens that gives you a very narrow depth-of-field AND has great bokeh. (Just to reinforce that again .. narrow DoF and bokeh are not the same thing. But I digress.) So, whether you’re shooting with a Nikon 85mm f1.4 lens (B&H), or the Canon 85mm f1.2 (B&H), or Canon 85mm f1.8 (B&H) … these images are easily attainable. It is more about the technique and thought-process and approach, than any specific piece of equipment. However, you do need photo equipment that enables you to achieve what you want to, technically and stylistically.

So walking around with Anelisa, looking for great backgrounds I saw this fantastic Art Deco styled exterior of a diner. And I knew that with the various colors and shadings in the late afternoon, it would give beautifully colored reflections at various angles. Here is the pull-back shot …

The approach is simple, and exactly what thousands of photographers have done before … find a great background to place someone in front of.  It is a simple approach, and usually works very well.  Choosing a shallow depth of field here wouldn’t really affect the final photograph since she is so close to the background.  But what I wanted to show with the rest of this post, is how we can create a varied background when shooting with a shallow depth-of-field and a lens with great bokeh.

Now where these wide-aperture telephoto lenses excel, is in melting away any background that is a distance away from your subject. In fact it seems like you could place your subject pretty much anywhere (where you have great light), and allow the background to disappear into mush.

From this exact spot …

… we were able to pull out a series of gorgeous portraits. I really liked this one. It’s just the available light again.

The background, when in focus, is truly random and ugly. But, as a defocused background, it looks great … however, it isn’t random. It is still specific. I moved my position until I had her framed the way I wanted to, in relation to the out-of-focus colored areas. This is still very consistent with my approach in achieving effective on-location portraits. Similarly, the way I positioned Anelisa isn’t random either, but very specific in relation to the available light. In this way, I created the background with a combination of shallow depth of field, and a lens with great bokeh.  A do-everything zoom is just not going to get you there if you want to achieve this kind of look.

From here on we went to Times Square. But Times Square is so colorful that it becomes really easy to pull these kinds of shots out with an 85mm prime lens used at a wide aperture. SO easy it seemed like cheating in comparison to the photo above.

The final point to this posting, is that there is a consistent technique here. A way of seeing and working … enabled by using equipment of a certain quality.

Camera settings:
image at the top:  1/160 @ f1.8 @ 800 ISO
image at bottom: 1/250 @ f1.4 @ 800 ISO

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bokeh – quality of lens blur

The way that a specific lens renders the out-of-focus areas in the background (ie, the bokeh of the lens), is always an interesting aspect of any lens’ behavior. If the out of focus areas show hard edges, or highlights with a kind of double edge, then the bokeh can appear intrusive. Then it is called harsh bokeh. If the out of focus areas are smooth without the edges being defined, then the bokeh is described as being pleasant. And then on occasion, you get bokeh that is … well, let’s just call it ‘interesting’.

I noticed that the Nikon 105mm f2.8 VR macro (B&H) can at times show a weird circular swirl in the background. It is especially noticeable if there are bright out of focus highlights. The photo at the top shows this clearly, even with a background that should appear smooth. In comparison, we can see how the famed Zeiss Makro-Planar T* 100mm f/2 ZF (B&H), renders the highlights. Smooth. Just as you’d expect from a lens with such a reputation.  (Both images were shot at f2.8 although the Zeiss is capable of f2 which is exceptional for a 100mm macro lens!)

Just for interest here, I thought of showing how a few other lenses compare in how they render the background …

The simple portraits here of Jessica, my assistant, aren’t as controlled as they need to be for specific comparison, but will still give an idea of how these lenses perform in terms of their bokeh.  Jessica stood still, and I tried to maintain more or less the same distance and point of view. Next time, a tripod for sure.  To make the comparison here, all the lenses were used at f4 in the following examples. With the zooms, I tried for an 85mm focal length.

Just a quick note – keep in mind that shallow depth of field is NOT the same thing as bokeh.

The Canon 85mm f1.8 (B&H), is a gem of a lens.  Affordable, and with speedy auto-focusing and great optical quality … including  stellar lens with a very good reputation for speed of auto-focusing.  On top of that, this lens has superb bokeh.  Just look at how smooth the out of focus areas are!

The Canon 24-105mm f4L zoom (H&H), has superb sharpness for such a wide-range zoom, but typically of the wide-to-tele zooms, the bokeh can be intrusive. You can see the background is more noticeable here when compared to the Canon 85mm f1.8

The newly released Nikon 24-120 f4G VR II zoom (B&H), exhibits similar bokeh. You can see it in how the circular highlight appear.  Neat little lens though for a general purpose lens.

Here is the new Nikon 85mm f1.4G (B&H) … and as expected from the update to a lens renowned for superb bokeh, the background appears smooth. The circular highlights are smoother than shown in the two photos by the wide-to-tele zooms.

Out of interest, I wanted to see how the Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 VR II zoom (B&H), performed compared to the 85mm (used at f4), but something odd happened.  With the new zoom’s known ‘focus breathing’ issue, the focal length at such a short distance had changed and the angle of view was wider than the 85mm focal length I was trying to maintain for this series of images. So I had to zoom to around 130mm to get approximately the same portrait size … but now in comparison, this lens has a much softer background. From this, the bokeh looks incredible, but I wonder how one would be able to make a fair comparison if the focal length changes.

This wasn’t a scientific or controlled test by any means, but hopefully the examples shown here will give some idea of how good and poor bokeh compares .. and of course the “interesting” bokeh of the Nikon macro.

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The first thing you might notice in this image is our super-cute model, Johannie.

Next you will probably notice either:
- the strange background pattern, (due to this lens’ bokeh),
- or the lighting on her, (a reflector),
- or the wafer-thin depth-of-field. (f1.4)

These are all inter-related in some way for this photo.

Bokeh:

With this part of the photo session, I wanted to get images to illustrate a certain point about bokeh.  I didn’t quite get the sequence of images that I needed for a comparison, so that will have to wait for a future article again.  However, we can already see an aspect of that in this photo:

Shallow depth of field is NOT the same as having good bokeh.

The out-of-focus leaves and branches in the background have an intrusive harsh shape to the edges.  The out-of-focus benches in the background also have that strange double effect to their shape.  This is because this lens exhibits harsh bokeh.  Not smooth.  Not “buttery”.

The photo was taken at f1.4 which is the widest possible aperture on this specific lens.  Therefore the depth-of-field is shallow, yet the bokeh remains harsh.  This is simply due to the actual optical design of this lens.  And you may well ask what lens this was – the Nikon 50mm f1.4 AF-D, but the Canon 50mm f1.4 looks very similar.  Ideally we’d want a lens that offers shallow depth of field to also exhibit great bokeh – a smooth rendition of the background.  But we’ll come back to this topic some time soon in the future with another more thorough article.

Using a reflector:

Since I desired a very shallow depth of field in such bright light, the wide aperture forced a high shutter speed.  The shutter speed being higher than maximum flash sync speed, would mean I’d have two options:
- use high-speed sync on my flash.  This would mean reduced output on my flash.  And the easiest would be to use wireless radio controllers like the Radio Poppers.
- use a reflector.

Camera settings:  1/4000 @ f1.4 @ 200 ISO

I had my assistant hold up a white reflector to throw some light directly onto our model. This then created that interesting tightly ‘focused’ light on just her face and upper part of her body.  The light that is reflected from the sun like this is pretty harsh, so I made sure that Johannie didn’t have to look directly into this.  I also had my assistant throw the light onto her for very short moments in which I’d shoot a burst of images.

This would also explain the change in color balance across our model’s body.  Her face is now lit by sunlight, yet the rest of her body is still in shadow.  Two different white balance settings would be needed .. which of course is impossible in-camera.  But I like the effect here – it helps direct attention to her.

A reflector is often used for just a bit of fill-light on the subject, but in this case the light from the reflector becomes a main source of light.

Shallow depth of field:

So I had ulterior motives here in using such a wide aperture – I needed material to illustrate an article on bokeh.  And just to re-iterate: shallow depth of field is not the same as good bokeh.  But I digress.  Shallow depth of field. Using a shallow depth of field is possibly the easiest way to direct attention to your subject.  Your subject pops out from the background, giving a near 3-D effect when used well.  And then we just need to take care of our lighting, our composition and the background, for more effective on-location portraits.

The things we need to consider in our photography are nearly invariably inter-connected like that in some way.

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bokeh – the quality of blur

Bokeh is the term used to describe the quality of background blur in a photo,

i.e. how pleasing the blur looks of the background areas. Since the softness of the background blur is usually more important than how the foreground items are blurred, bokeh usually relates to the background blur.

The bokeh of a lens is influenced by numerous factors, including
- the lens design,
- specifically, how spherical aberrations are corrected,
- the number of blades in the aperture mechanism,
- focusing distance,
- the actual aperture used will also affect bokeh to some extent,
- the distance of the out-of-focus objects,
- and in the case of the Nikon DC lenses, by how certain aberrations are selectively introduced.

Bokeh is usually described as being subjective, and it largely is.  However, when you’re able to recognize the difference between good bokeh and poor / harsh bokeh, then it becomes less subjective I believe. When you see good bokeh, you’ll recognize it. Same with bad bokeh.

To illustrate how good bokeh appears, and what poor bokeh looks like, I had set up this simple shot.

It isn’t art, so don’t critique the photography – I wanted those random out-of-focus items in the background.

I used two lenses here, comparing the Nikon 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 with one of the very best lenses that Nikon has .. the 105mm f2 DC. The 105mm DC lens has superb bokeh, so it should be quite apparent in comparison photographs why I didn’t like the 28-105mm lens in this respect.

Here’s the set-up shot .. my daughter in our backyard, with some back-lighting and arbitrary
out-of-focus clutter in the background. The general photo is reduced in size, but the other two are 100% crops, shot with low sharpening on the D2H, both lenses at f5.6

As you should be able to see from these crops, the 28-105mm zoom has a harsh bokeh ..
the out-of-focus areas look ‘wiry’, whereas the 105mm DC lens has a very smooth looking out of focus background.

The 100% crop from the 105mm f2 DC ..

.
.. and the 100% crop from the 28-105mm zoom at 105mm setting ..

(The part of the railing that is visible, seems to be clearer in the one shot, but that was because she moved slightly and I had to refocus on her eyes. I did try to keep things as consistent as possible, but little kids aren’t inanimate. The photos should still serve as a comparison.)

Anyway … this was one of the reasons I sold the 28-105 mm lens.
The bokeh was harsh. And yes, the client might not notice, but I do.

.
bokeh & depth-of-field

I frequently see photographers confuse shallow depth-of-field (DoF), and call it bokeh.  And worse, just because they achieve shallow DoF, talk about “getting more bokeh”.  So I would like to emphasize this point .. shallow depth-of-field is NOT the same as bokeh.  Bokeh is about the quality of the background blur, and not directly about the depth-of-field.

Bokeh is a function of the optics, and specifically describes the quality of the out of focus areas – whether it is smooth or harsh. Therefore, you don’t get “more bokeh” by going from f5.6 to f2 .. but you do get shallower depth of field.

Also, phrases like “more bokeh”  are nonsensical terms.  A description such as “more pleasing bokeh” .. that makes sense. But, going from f5.6 to f2 doesn’t give you “more pleasing bokeh” … it just gives you shallower depth of field.

But .. as someone pointed out to me, this is mostly true.
While it is true that a given lens will maintain certain optical traits across its aperture range – such as how in these examples it renders background highlights – there are some characteristics, usually uncontrolled aberrations, that are only visible at wider apertures: soft corners, coma, vignetting, etc., that can all contribute to what might be considered a “more pleasing bokeh.”

Using a different LENS with different characteristics will give you more pleasing bokeh than a lens with harsh bokeh, more so than a change in aperture would.  So it would still be true to say that bokeh isn’t the same as shallow depth-of-field.

All of which kills me when people fawn over how awesome the bokeh is of their Canon 50mm f1.4 or Nikon 50mm f1.4 lenses .. both known for poor bokeh. Just because the image was shot at f2 or wider, and with a background so far away and defocused that you don’t actually get to see ANY background detail, doesn’t automatically give you great bokeh.  You have to see the way the lens handles out-of-focus background areas before making that judgment.

Examples of lenses which will give you great bokeh:
Canon 24-70mm f2.8
Nikon 28-70mm f2.8 and the Nikon 24-70mm f2.8

And then of course, you have the kings of beautiful bokeh:
Nikon 135mm f2 DC
Nikon 200mm f2 VR
Canon 200mm f2 IS
(there are many others)

Lenses that have crap bokeh, no matter what you do:
Nikon 50mm f1.4 AF-D
Canon 50mm f1.4
Nikon 28-105mm 3.5-f4.5
Canon 24-105mm f4

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