A Chef. And tiny, ancient camera bokeh.

 I took this photo of my friend, Emmett with the ancient and primitive Panasonic G3. Of course, every expert on the planet told me it was impossible to put background sufficiently out of focus with the dainty and limited, teeny-tiny sensor in that camera. I tried anyway. 

I used the version one version of the Leica Summilux 25mm f1.4 with a working aperture of f2.5. The shutter speed was 1/125th of a second and the ISO was set at 640. I think we were able to make it work.

In a moment of incoherence I sold my first 25mm Summilux to another photo blogger. When I got back into the system this past year it was one of the very first lenses I replaced. But this time I bought the second generation. Works better with DfD and it's better weather sealed. Optics are reported to be the same. Those standard angle of view lenses are crucial for every format. At least I think so...

Bokeh-O-Rama in the service of advertising.

 

I was reminiscing about all the DSLR cameras I've used and I came across a lot of images we made while using one of the stars of the DSLR epoch; the Canon 5Dmk2. This image was a combination of available light at ISO 100, 1/13th of a second shutter speed and an aperture of f2.8 mixed with some soft electronic flash from the front. I was using an 85mm f1.8 lens.

It's a text book example of how we used to use the ability to render a background out of focus before the more recent trend of slivering the depth of field to the width of a gnat's whisker. In the days before micro slicing depth of field we tried to keep an image in focus enough to keep out main subject nicely sharp while putting the background into the "recognizable, but vague" category, which covers a myriad of styling sins...

By using a bit of aperture restraint we are still able to see that our subject has both ears and that his shirt is wrinkly instead of looking as soft as pudding.