Bokeh Test!

[Armin Seeholzer]

Hi folks

I did a Bokeh testing on my lenses not on my wides but on almost all lenses I have at this time!

Hope you like it!
I did only focus with the Horseman Bino so its not about sharpness here its only about Bokeh!!!:p ;) :D :)

https://picasaweb.google.com/108681026376295503228/BokehLFLensTest

Cheers Armin

[TheDeardorffGuy]

Just got in for a free day. Saw this post and tested some glass. A 4.5 Gundlach RADAR, 4.5 Ektar and a Zeiss 4.5 Tessar. All 12in. Can't tell the difference in the shadows when focused on a object 6 feet away. My 300 Plasmat is a completely different story however. I never noticed it wide open. I'm a f64 shoother and so 4.5 is a different world.

[Ken Lee]

It's hard to compare the out-of-focus areas on the images when they are so small, and presented only 1 at a time.

[Armin Seeholzer]

I will put them bigger on my HP but it will take some time, including a set up shoot!

See you, Armin

[Ken Lee]

Others may disagree, but IMHO to evaluate blur rendition, most of the image should be out of focus, with a small portion sharp for reference.

[johnielvis]

yeah...he's on to it

you can't git de bokough bokah witOUT de blur!!! what you did is a depth of field test

you want the close up in focus and far back out of focus bocoup boka....

DIN you gits it

or just de hell wit dat and shoot sharp..you look good at dat

[Armin Seeholzer]

Bokeh is for me the transition from sharp to unsharp, do you see it on my pics or not?
Did some new larger pics onto it!

https://picasaweb.google.com/108681026376295503228/BokehLFLensTest#

[Ken Lee]

There are a lot of photos there. Perhaps you can point us to some notable examples which demonstrate what you have discovered.

One thing I see is that wide-open, most of the lenses do a bad job in displaying an "airy" disk: they have coma (elliptical rendition of a circle) or rings. Stopping down a little from wide-open, many do a nicer job.

[Old-N-Feeble]

Thank you for posting your bokeh results. I'll probably do some of my own but in a slightly different way. I want to test for blurred highlights and shadows both in front of and behind the plane of focus... at least three levels of defocus... probably just three aperture settings though.

The only thing that was "glaringly" obvious to me was the terrible rendition of blurred highlights behind the plane of focus by the 610mm Apo Nikkor wide open. That surprised me. It looks nice at f/22 though.

[Armin Seeholzer]

Hi Ken
The APO Skopar is even full open at f9 sharp like a knife the Xenar at f4.5 is almost like a SF lens at f4,5 but at f5,6 it starts to improve and I use also this f stop for focusing. The Sironar SE 240 is also full open tack sharp. The Universal Heliar has only with SF a bit in a very nice bokeh not so good in sharp setting, all depends also on distance and what is there!
Vor me the biggest surprise in bokeh is the Tele Arton 270mm very pleasing bokeh and really sharp from f11 on up!

For to get really an full idea of a lens it needs maybe 2-3 different settings with different things in the back and at different distances!
For example the Universal Heliar gives on a portrait without SF and with f8 or f 5.6 a very pleasing 3D portrait look with wonderfull hairs out of fokus etc. but on my test above I was almost pissed about the open Universal Heliar bokeh without SF setting!

But I learned my lenses an there short comings, faster this way! Just to listen on rumors is not always really the way to go,--)))

Cheers Armin

[Armin Seeholzer]

I forgot to say the Xenar was at f4,5 but the Sinar shutter kills the f4,5 its more like f 5,6 because the shutter cuts the outer parts of the beam behind the lens!

[redu]

Armin, It's a very hard work of patience. You must have spared enormous time for this work. Thanks for your contribution to the society. Of course it is hard to tell the differences in the way you have chosen to present your results. I believe even at fullscreen of my computer, it's resolution would not be sufficient to display meaningful comparison data on large format studies. May be it will be more helpful to display 100% crops of the areas that you believe to be critical on your results.

Besides like previously mentioned, bokeh is better noticed and judged at wide apertures and in the areas reside beyond or behide focal plane. You may achieve a reduction on the depth of field by focussing at closer objects. Hence for bokeh testing i would choose longest bellows draw setups for each lens.

[rdenney]

It's quite possible and potentially useful to evaluate bokeh at small apertures, but it takes high magnification to see the effects on a computer monitor. Plus, given that it is a subjective effect, that magnified image needs to be positioned adjacent to the comparison image.

The photo hosting sites surely do make presentation of this sort difficult. You almost have to tile the comparisons on the same image.

Rick "who knows how hard this is" Denney