I saw some criticism on FB about the bokeh but honestly I am not seeing much if any difference from Canon and Nikon lenses of the same focal length and the comments seemed to come from the same people that have been critical of Sony since it's entry into the market. Plus the very small number of people either buying or renting this lens are not basing their decision on something as esoteric as bokeh... 1. AF performance 2. Sharpness 3. Build and Durability 4. Weather Sealing 5. Pro Service & Support 6. Weight ...... 99. Bokeh
I must be an exception then, because for me the order of importance is 1. AF performance, 2. Bokeh, 3. Weather sealing, 4. Sharpness, 5. Durability, 6. Weight,...
Images taken with such a lens are all about bokeh really. At the reproduction sizes most people use these lenses for, ISO 12,800 on a D5/1DxII/a9 is more than good enough and this means that f4 or f5.6 would be ok. The reason why we shoot f2.8 is because we want to isolate the subject over uncontrollable backgrounds, typically a crowd or ugly buildings. And the way they are rendered has a high impact on the look of images. To me that's the main reason why I shoot a FF camera and not a micro 4:3.
Nervous bokeh has a bad tendency to generate interferences with low res magazine print technologies and can be nearly painful to the eyes in some cases. I wouldn't want my images to be affected by that.
But anyway, it seems that this topic is a bit touchy, I'll leave it at that.
This is an example of what I call a nice bokeh.
Cheers,
Bernard