Olympus Bokeh Research

VidThreeNorth · Mar 13, 2018

Imaging Resource article by Mike Tomkins, Feb 14, 2018:

"The new bokeh champs? Olympus cracks the code for beautiful bokeh with its F1.2 Pro prime lens series"

The new bokeh champs? Olympus cracks the code for beautiful bokeh with its F1.2 Pro prime lens series

This article includes a detailed technical description about how bokeh works.

vin88 · Mar 14, 2018

Very interesting, thanks

waday · Mar 14, 2018

Thanks for the link! Interesting read.

Love their f/1.2 lenses.

VidThreeNorth · Mar 15, 2018

Not my work. Tomkins and Olympus et al. did the heavy lifting for this article. Much thanks from all of us to them. I thought that I read an article about some of Sony's recent G Master lenses being designed for better bokeh too, but after poking around, I cannot find it. I think it was within the last six months. They did no describe their techniques like this. That article emphasized Sony's latest aspheric lens making techniques.

A key point in this article is that bokeh changes from feather to ring depending on whether what is in focus is in front of or behind the focus distance. In general, the easiest approach is not to have anything nearer the main subject when using such a lens. Sometimes we do not have a choice about that.

mrca · Mar 15, 2018

My Nikon 135 2.0 dc has bokeh like budda. Creamy. Not a single feather or ring... except for the bokeh ring that adjust bokeh 4 stops ahead or behind the subject.

VidThreeNorth · Mar 17, 2018

mrca said:
My Nikon 135 2.0 dc has bokeh like budda. Creamy. Not a single feather or ring... except for the bokeh ring that adjust bokeh 4 stops ahead or behind the subject.

I have heard of those lenses, but I have not looked into them. I understand that they are based on spherical aberration which is what Olympus is describing, so it looks like these companies are in general agreement.

I expect that if I look into pricing, both companies are charging high prices for this feature. Really, it is not magical to create a lens with "spherical aberration". They do not really have to limit this to expensive lenses.