

Is that because of many more aperture blades? No. Unlike the other two lenses, the bokeh balls remain fairly circular even when the lens is stopped down to f/2.8.

This lens has seven blades rather than six, producing heptagons that are a bit closer to circles.įinally, we come to the bottom row produced by the Nikon 50mm f/1.8G lens. This is important to keep in mind because these lenses have made a bit of a comeback since the rise of lens adapters and mirrorless cameras.Īnyway, moving down to the middle row taken by the more modern Laowa 50mm f/2.8 2X macro, you can see that the aperture blades are better behaved here and never produce the shuriken bokeh of the Pentax.
#Best bokeh lens for sony manual
Such designs are prevalent on older, manual focus lenses. On this lens, the aperture blades form almost a perfect hexagon when stopped down, giving the background blur sharp protrusions that are especially aggressive.

It has six aperture blades, which make the balls turn into hexagons when the lens is stopped down. Why are these shapes so different? The answer is that out-of-focus highlights in an image take on the shape of your lens’s aperture blades.įor instance, the top row is the Pentax A 50mm f/1.7 lens. However, all three lenses also have very different shapes in the background. They shrink and become more jagged as you stop down. For example, let’s take a look at how aperture blades can affect specular highlights, which is just one aspect of bokeh: Bokeh circles produced by three different lenses at three different aperturesĪs you can see, the shapes start out large and circular when you’re shooting with your aperture wide open. Pretty much every optical feature of a lens – from aperture blades to special elements – affects bokeh. Checking on B&H Photo, I find 21 of them just in Sony E mount, with eight of them having a maximum aperture of f/1.4! However, if you bought all of them, you’d find that not all of them produce the same quality of bokeh. Let’s say I want a prime in the classic portrait focal length of 85mm. Sometimes you can buy your way to fame, and that’s certainly true with getting better bokeh.
