Lenses with the "best" Bokeh !

donaldejose

I have been shooting f4 or 5.6 in studio for portraits and the same outdoors but I need to shoot more at f2 outdoors. I am afraid to shoot at f1.4 unless it is a full body shot or the subjects eyes are parallel to the sensor. I guess I should be more brave.

Ironheart

Focal length and distance matter too.. If you have a long focal length, say 200mm, you will need to back up to get a fully body shot. This will increase the DoF so you will have more in focus. In a studio, unless you have a big one, you will not be able to use the longer FLs for full body shots. With a 105 or 135, you will have to back up to get a whole group in there anyway, and the DoF will increase accordingly. At least thats how Dad always did it
Also, the distance between the subject and the background will have a greater effect on bokeh than f-stop. Outdoors, if you can have the background 100' away from the subject, it will be better than 10' away. Again, studios make this hard, which is why good backdrops are so expensive.

starralazn

I definitely agree that shooting wide open has limited application in a studio.

Vipmediastar_JZ

I agree shooting 5.6-f8 in studio but sometimes you want something diffrent
this is not wide open but I can try next time with this lens

MegapixelSchnitzel

I love human faces/character studies. And I love the details your chosen aperture brought out on this guy's face, Vipmediastar.

I do a fair amount of portraiture in studio environment, and by using 3 lights I can get some very beautiful results - almost 3 dimensional - with f/16 or so. A lot of times I want my subject razor sharp with everything else incidental to him/her. I use the lights on those portraits to separate the subject from the backgrounds and they can really pop... even with the background in relatively sharp focus. For outside still life I have used the 105 macro wide open to great effect (f/2.8). I rarely use a f/1.4 lens for isolation; I'll tend to use a shorter telephoto, be very careful of subject placement in regards to background, and f/3.5 becomes very useful with that technique.

snakebunk

I think the bokeh is mostly affected by the distance between the bird and the background in relation to the distance between the camera and the bird (if you photograph birds). Also the type of background is very important. The aperture is somewhat important and the lense doesn't matter very much. At least according to my experience.

I like abstract bokeh where you can still kind of tell what the background is about. Here are two examples of what I think is a nice bokeh, both shot with a Sigma 500/4.5 at 5.6:

MegapixelSchnitzel

I really like the top shot (red bird), Andreas. Super job! Being from Sacramento, I don't really know what all the white stuff is - but I like it!

snakebunk

@MegapixelSchnitzel: It was cold up there in the most northern parts of Norway (just a few kilometers from Russia). Thank you for the nice comment!

mhz

24-70mm 2.8 @52mm f/3.2 1/200s iso 160,