f2 anyone?

[peripatetic]

On my fun holiday I tried to do quite a lot of gratuitous f2 shooting.

It's certainly possible to provoke some nasty high-frequency effects if you are not careful, but for people shots the fall-off is very pleasing I think.

I'm sure the connoisseurs here will be able to compare it to lots of different lenses, but it's certainly better than many of the lenses I've owned.

I do think of f2 as a slightly soft "portrait" setting because from f2.8-f11 it's very very sharp.

Some pics on my blog post...

 

[jsrockit]

I'm really starting to like the look of the Fuji's lens wide open. My Sonnar has made me appreciate that not everything needs to be razor sharp... sometimes soft is good.

 

[Richard G]

Very beautiful. Are they without some exposure compensation? Pretty clever if so.

 

[Nikon Bob]

I don't think that they are particularly soft and the transition, at least in these, to OOF areas seems smooth. I could easily live with this set up.

Bob

 

[peripatetic]

Very beautiful. Are they without some exposure compensation? Pretty clever if so.

The first two had no compensation, the metering pretty much nailed it. Processed from RAW in LR3 though.

The last one was a bit of an experiment. Forced fill flash and -.67 EV, but then also processed from RAW.

There is good latitude in the RAW files. ACR is doing a great job as far as I can see.

 

[DavidX]

I really like the look of those blog shots; and for me this is highlighting how the camera takes a lot of learning... mucking about at f2 to start with I saw some effects that I thought were awful (I was trying close focus on food with backlighting) but then that made me think "Hmm, those effects could work really well on portraits..." looked at your post, and bingo! I'm really looking forward to getting to know what I can get with this camera...

 

[jsrockit]

Yes, some of the time at f/2 at macro focus levels, it can have some "ugly" abberations... I use it at f/2 even on macro, but usually shoot a f/4 version as well.

 

[DavidX]

Loving the forum - I'm getting so many good tips from the knowledgable people here.

I'm shooting more at f2 - it makes me want to marry this camera and have its babies.