My classmate, Frank Ling, of Groks Science fame, had a couple hours layover in San Francisco on his return home to the radioactive wasteland.
Marie and I stopped by SFO to pick him up for some linner—why not In-N-Out Burger? “A burger sounds good.” And off we went.
In-N-Out Burger, Millbrae, California
Olympus E-P2, Voigtlander 25mm F0.95
…delta getting lost because my iPhone Google Maps was set to pedestrian mode.
In-N-Out Burger, Millbrae, California
Olympus E-P2, Voigtlander 25mm F0.95
Of course, I brought my new lens along: a Cosina-Voigtlander 25mm Nokton for m4:3 at an impossible maximum aperture of f/0.95!
Note that since I dropped it, I was having trouble using the lens, but one thing I do with this, but cannot do with my Leica, is focus close. This means I have to take close up portraits with this lens.
In-N-Out Burger, Millbrae, California
Olympus E-P2, Voigtlander 25mm F0.95
And Marie…
In-N-Out Burger, Millbrae, California
Olympus E-P2, Voigtlander 25mm F0.95
What do you think of indoor daytime bokeh on this lens? Bokeh is a Japanese word describing the qualia of the background blur. Notice how’s Marie’s bokeh is much worse? That’s because the relative lighting between subject and background has a huge impact on bokeh—something not mentioned in photography articles. Bokeh is a lot like the Cosina-Voigtlander 0.95 lens and my friend Frank Ling—mostly Japanese and defying easy description.
Bokeh is simply not just a property of the lens, aperture, subject distance, and background type. Almost everything seems to affect bokeh. So I have only one criteria for it—if I want any of it, give me an all-you-can-eat bokeh buffet! Hence all these images were shot at f/0.95. 🙂
Because of the tiny depth-of-field, to focus with a manual lens on an Olympus, you stay in to the “zoom view” viewfinder mode. First you get a general sense of the focus since the range is huge, you then brace yourself, center the zoom on the eye of the subject, hit the “OK” button and fine focus until the eye is tack sharp. Finally, you recompose and hit the shutter. All in all, it takes only slightly longer to focus than on my Leica M8. Which means it’s much faster since I don’t have to wait 10 seconds for the image to pop up in my digital preview to figure out if I metered correctly.
This reminds me, if you can focus close, you must take a photo of the food.
In-N-Out Burger, Millbrae, California
Olympus E-P2, Voigtlander 25mm F0.95
People always make fun of my habit of photographing food. But if I didn’t, you wouldn’t be craving an In-N-Out burger right now. 🙂
(Mouseover images to view pre-processed originals.)
Terry man, what an awesome lens! that bokeh is just gorgeous.. it totally looks like full frame material! hey and I love how you can put your mouse on the photo and see the original.. incredible difference. And thanks for the tip on the diptych I should do that next time!