On 4/9/2015 1:32 PM, Ken Norton wrote:
Since I apparently have no photographic skills would you care to elucidate?
Background isolation and DoF control with 4/3 is a piece of cake. It's
all in the focal lengths, apertures and working distances.
I have absolutely no problem getting awesome portraits with the
50/1.4, 35-80/2.8 or 100/2. As far as E-system lenses are concerned,
the 50-200 is a golden lens as is the 50/2. ...
F2 at 50mm is all you really need. Beyond that it's just a peeing contest.
I'm gonna agree, with caveats.
Seems to me there are three similar, but not identical, things desired from
very fast lenses in the DoF department.
1. Good portraits. To me, a good portrait has the eye (or close eye) in sharp focus, and enough DoF that the nose in
straight on shots is no more than slightly soft. The M.Z 45/1.8, wide open delivers very well in that aspect.
2. Background separation. You can see in the little portrait gallery I posted what AG says about this.
<http://zone-10.com/tope2/main.php?g2_itemId=16560>
Shoot wide open, as in Mike's two shots of me, with background quite close behind, and background separation is
moderate. The people further back are nicely soft. Shoot with the background several feet behind, as with my shot of
Carol, and separation is great. Or shoot with outside night behind, as in my shot of Mike, and it's golden. :-)
If one wants greater background separation with low spacial separation, the 4/3 format isn't ideal. But that is of no
consequence to me, as I can't recall the last time I wanted that. For portraits, my requirements above simply mean that
I couldn't go shallower anyway, so I need to take care about backgrounds, as any wider and the DoF would insufficient
for the subject.
3. The very specific look of super shallow DoF. Done right, with the right subject (esp. with a lens that has various
aberrations wide open, to smooth things out, and in B&W) and this can produce great shots.
Unfortunately, from my perspective, I see more that miss than hit here. Tina showed a lot of portraits, esp. in Central
America, shot with her nocti_whatever with important parts of the faces wildly out of focus. Those make my eyes go
crazy. Then there was the fellow from South Africa who was nuts for super shallow DoF. I could see what I thought he was
trying to get, but most of the time, the focal plane was not precisely placed, a bit to close or far, and they didn't
work for me.
I don't think (µ)4/3 is a good format for this kind of work. Even if the CV f0.95 lenses deliver the DoF goods, which I
don't know about, and rather doubt, placing the focal plane for anything but a still life with tripod has gotta be
really tough.
Moose d'Shallow Opinion
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What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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