Swirly TLR bokeh

[littleearth]

It won't swirl like the Yashikor lens ! Triplet lenses do it very easily.

 

[nomadia]

Swirly Bokeh from Rollei Magic 1

 

[f16sunshine]

Yashica LM with Lumuxar 80mm f3.5 (super sharp and great pop but swirls like mad at close to mid distance focus.

Larger embedded just click


Tele Rolleiflex also gets all swirly at close distances. This was a sonar version.

 

[farlymac]

That is one cool dog, Andy.

PF

 

[f16sunshine]

Thanks PF. That's Hugo. He's just like gold in my family. 🙂

cheers!

 

[CMur12]

Unfortunately, I'm not able to discern the swirling that everyone here is talking about.

I have a Yashica-Mat EM and it has a 9-bladed diaphragm, which may be common to earlier Yashica-Mats. Could that contribute to the swirling effect?

As far as I know, "Luxamar" is the older name for the Yashinon lens.

- Murray

 

[Spicy]

when the bokeh balls aren't perfectly round, the ends of the football-shaped bokeh ovals tend to point perpendicular to the radius that connects to the center of the image (providing it hasn't been cropped).

i'm sure someone on here who actually knows about optics could explain it better, but as best as i know, it has something to do with the optics and amount of correction that additional lens elements are able to provide, which is why 3-element lenses tend to exhibit it more than 4- or more element lenses, particularly wide open and focused close, when the bokeh balls are most pronounced.

as to number of aperture blades, i don't think that really has much of an effect, as most lenses that are that old/simple are found in TLRs/rangefinders, which do not have auto-indexing. since more modern lenses for SLRs tend to have both more than 3 elements, as well as having fewer aperture blades (which is necessary to keep the weight and friction low so as to be able to stop-down quickly before the mirror flips up and the shutter fires) which means that they are bokeh polygons rather than circles, they often don't exhibit this swirly effect.

 

[Scrambler]

Unfortunately, I'm not able to discern the swirling that everyone here is talking about.

I have a Yashica-Mat EM and it has a 9-bladed diaphragm, which may be common to earlier Yashica-Mats. Could that contribute to the swirling effect?

As far as I know, "Luxamar" is the older name for the Yashinon lens.

- Murray

Hi Murray,

The "swirling" comes from oval out-of-focus highlights, which form slightly circular patterns when there is a busy background (and when your lens is prone to it). It's probably an entrance pupil effect rather than a diaphragm effect.

Tessar lenses (like the Yashinon) are not usually prone, but older Yashica triplets are. Leica has a few lenses in their (back) catalog that do it, most notably the fast(ish) 50's like the Summitar and Summicron.

The Yashica-Mat swirling earlier in this thread is unusual, as you will see from the non-swirling Yashica-Mat photo even earlier. I have a Yashica 635, and it will definitely swirl in the "right" circumstances.

EDIT: Spicy beat me to it - though I keep thinking buckyballs when he means the same as my "out of focus highlights."

 

[CMur12]

Thanks for the explanations, Spicy and Scrambler. I'll go back and take another look at the images in this thread. 🙂

- Murray