mike goldberg
QUESTIONS:
- What does "bokeh" mean; it's not in the dictionary? ;)
- Does Pentax K-mount mean that it will fit a *1st DS/DS2?
[/QUOTE said:
What xayraa33 said. Pentax had two kinds of mounts so-called "universal" screw-mount lenses and K-mount lenses, both for SLRs. Many, many companies made lenses in the Universal mount and Cosina currently makes some. Pentax has always been pretty good about backwards compatibility. In this case, use of an adapter allows the broad range of lenses made in universal mount to be used with a modern DSLR. If you pursue this path, spend the extra bucks and get the Pentax brand adapter, rather than a less-expensive knock-off.
Bokeh is a Japanese term which, as noted, referrs to the quality of out-of-focus areas in a photograph. Some lenses (fast Nikon glass e.g. 50/1.4) render straight lines in the out-of-focus areas as double-lines. In Japan this is referred to as nissen or "drunken" boke and some consider it ugly. Boke "kings" such as the Contax G 45/2, Leica Summicrons, Contax Sonnars, among many others, render out-of-focus areas as smooth and creamy. Boke is a highly subjective term and on the 'Net can get ordinarily rational people sputtering at one another in adjective-laden diatribes.
I was tickled by the term when I learned it because it showed (to someone at the time obsessed with lens sharpness and resolving power) that there were different (often unrelated) criteria out there for judging a lens, criteria that might reflect different aesthetic, even cultural, categories. It was a sharp shot to the head for me. Many, many others feel that it is the rendering of in-focus areas of a photograph that really matter and that the out-of-focus areas (that is -- not the subject) should be left to fall where they may. Still others feel that as boke cannot be measured that it shouldn't be discussed. A Google search will quickly turn up heated discussions that include these and other positions on the term.
Ben Marks
