My little bokeh test

[Blake.Oney]

To achieve it exactly like this I just manually focused until it was completely out of focus. The bokeh will be huge at that point so I focused in a little more to make it smaller. You can use that as a base to where you want to place a subject if you want to use one.

 

[sleist]

While this is interesting for what it is, it does not really tell you much about how the lens renders out of focus areas in real world use. Any lens under the right circumstances can render smooth out of focus areas or bokeh. The question is how far away from the in-focus foreground does the background have to be to render pleasing effects such as these.

 

[kundalini]

To achieve it exactly like this I just manually focused until it was completely out of focus.

If that's the case, I don't think you are seeing how the lens will render the bokeh, only how an out of focus image looks. Put a subject in frame, camera on tripod, achieve focus, then step through the apetures. Then take 100% crops as a bonus. I'm guessing the results will take on different characteristics.

 

[sleist]

To achieve it exactly like this I just manually focused until it was completely out of focus.

If that's the case, I don't think you are seeing how the lens will render the bokeh, only how an out of focus image looks. Put a subject in frame, camera on tripod, achieve focus, then step through the apetures. Then take 100% crops as a bonus. I'm guessing the results will take on different characteristics.

One thing you'll notice is that the disks may be much smaller and the bright edge on the lower left of the disks you see wide open may become more prominent and distracting as a result.

Here's an example of composition that's as easy to do as what you did, but gives a bit more details on performance. Not intended as being an example of good/bad bokeh as that's very subjective.

D90 | Sigma 50 1.4 @ f/2.8

 

[Blake.Oney]

That's what I was explaining above kind of. I did it with subjects separately. The very first thing that happened was that the bokeh was drastically different from the just out of focus shots. I got it where I wanted it just being out of focus and then started using subjects to set up my distance from camera, and then subject from background to get that same result.