Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Medium Format / Film / Digital Backs – and Large Sensor Photography => Topic started by: Brad P on April 16, 2017, 02:19:50 pm
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Could those of you with the X1D please comment on the quality of bokeh you are experiencing?
The XCD lenses produced so far use an eight straight blade design (good for sunstars, not so good for even circular bokeh). Reports indicate that at maximum aperture the blades are already stopped down a bit in the barrel, leaving an octagonal iris. Some reviewers have suggested that this, perhaps exacerbated by the particular lens designs and/or leaf shutter, can result in displeasing bokeh.
See for e.g., https://diglloyd.com/blog/2017/20170214_2028-HasselbladX1D-90f3_2-bokeh-OOF-night.html. As shot, F3.2 is wide open for this lens.
Do you observe this phenomenon with high contrast or bright lights in the background, or is this more the exception?
The 90mm has been reported as having this issue in particular. Do you see it also in the 30mm and 45mm?
Image samples with heavy high contrast out of focus background blur are hard to come by right now on the internet, so any samples you might share would be of interest.
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I don't own it anymore, but while using it during my week of testing I wasn't impressed at all with the bokeh performance. However, it would be nothing that bothers me personally as I mostly need a lens/camera to perform stopped down.
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Not sure about bokeh quality, but medium format digital is weak at DoF control (bokehliciousness, background blur, or degree of main subject separation from background), as well as autofocus, when compared against 35mm format. I guess it's just not the right tool for this kind of job.
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Thanks for the thoughts so far.
The more I look into this, the more I believe it may be a real issue with the X1D lenses issued so far, particularly maybe with the 90mm, high contrasty backgrounds, and at night with lights in the background. It doesn't kill the camera by any means. But it seems real and at least with my work it weighs pretty heavily in the balance.
For those interested, attached are a few more links showing what little I have found by way of images on the internet at present. The X1D images display hexagonal and geometric bokeh. Some may like the effect. I find it distracting. Lloyd Chambers and Photography Life have noted this too.
https://photographylife.com/fuji-gfx-50s-vs-hasselblad-x1d-50c/
https://blog.mingthein.com/2016/07/22/photoessay-people-of-penang-with-the-hasselblad-x1d/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevekralik/22747794098/in/pool-3021209@N23/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevekralik/22747794098/in/pool-3021209@N23/
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4132266
You can contrast this with the GFX lens bokeh here:
https://jonasraskphotography.com/2017/01/19/the-fujifilm-gfx-50s-review-portable-beast/#jp-carousel-9037
https://www.engadget.com/2017/03/30/fujifilm-gfx-50s-review/
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This was pointed out some time ago (probably a month or two) in this forum. Basically what you see are the shutter blades affecting the roundness of bokeh. I don't remember if it's just the blades being too slow to get out of the way, or a limitation of the lens design. I don't think it's something that can or will be fixed.
If you care about having creamy out of focus highlights in medium format, this camera is not for you. The Fuji, with its more traditional focal plane shutter, will provide what you ask for although at a much reduced flash sync speed (without resorting to HSS tricks).
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Basically what you see are the shutter blades affecting the roundness of bokeh. I don't remember if it's just the blades being too slow to get out of the way, or a limitation of the lens design. I don't think it's something that can or will be fixed.
If you care about having creamy out of focus highlights in medium format, this camera is not for you. The Fuji, with its more traditional focal plane shutter, will provide what you ask for although at a much reduced flash sync speed (without resorting to HSS tricks).
Can someone explain why at the same effective f/stop an in-lens leaf shutter would produce more angular bokeh than a conventional planer on-sensor shutter all else being equal? If anything I would have thought the opposite to be true.
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Can someone explain why at the same effective f/stop an in-lens leaf shutter would produce more angular bokeh than a conventional planer on-sensor shutter all else being equal? If anything I would have thought the opposite to be true.
Yes, the sensor starts to be exposed as soon as the leaf shutter opens, so the shape of the shutter as it opens is likely to impact the way OOF highlights render. That is if there is no electronic first shutter available, but even if there were one, this would a trade-off between shutter delay and bokeh look...
I guess that the smoothness of the background elements of lower levels of luminosity must be impacted a lot less, although it would depend on the duration of the exposure relative to the duration of the shutter opening sequence.
It is likely that putting a neutral filter in front of a leaf shutter lens may affect the way bokeh looks.
I have not noticed similar issues with the H lenses, such as the 50mm f3.5 II used in this image shot at ISO1600 this past Saturday:
(https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2813/34010136496_34de2ae2f3_o.jpg)
Cheers,
Bernard
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I agree the bokeh on the X1D isn't great at all. This is not a bokeh camera.
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Yes, the sensor starts to be exposed as soon as the leaf shutter opens, so the shape of the shutter as it opens is likely to impact the way OOF highlights render. That is if there is no electronic first shutter available, but even if there were one, this would a trade-off between shutter delay and bokeh look...
I guess that the smoothness of the background elements of lower levels of luminosity must be impacted a lot less, although it would depend on the duration of the exposure relative to the duration of the shutter opening sequence.
Thanks Bernard, that's what I thought but I don't get why that should 'sharpen' the bokeh. Unless there is asymmetry in the opening and closing speeds?
I agree the bokeh on the X1D isn't great at all. This is not a bokeh camera.
Could it be that the camera is fine but that's not a bokeh lens?
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I agree the bokeh on the X1D isn't great at all. This is not a bokeh camera.
Bokeh is typically a property of the lens, not camera system. I do not observe the same bokeh behavior on the XCD 45mm.
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Not sure about bokeh quality, but medium format digital is weak at DoF control (bokehliciousness, background blur, or degree of main subject separation from background), as well as autofocus, when compared against 35mm format. I guess it's just not the right tool for this kind of job.
This is true only if simple aperture-equivalency math is your guide. In reality there are several factors that contribute to bokeh and medium format is clearly the bokeh winner when you look at images rather than the math.
At heart bokeh is all about visual contrast* and separation. In the same way that a white model "stands out" more against a dark background, an image with beautiful bokeh creates contrast between the look/feel of the in-focus detail and the out-of-focus-detail.
FB/BG Contrast - Most people only focus on how blurred the background is. The visual contrast of bokeh however is formed by the contrast of how sharp the detail is vs the how blurred the background is, which in turn depends on how sharp the lens is and how much resolution you have. Therefore how sharp the detail is matters a lot. Take a Schneider 150/2.8 LS BR lens (https://digitaltransitions.com/product/150mm-ls-f2-8-blue-ring/) and an XF IQ3 100mp (https://digitaltransitions.com/xf-100mp-camera-system/) and shoot it wide open and you'll find it's wickedly sharp in the area of focus. Make a four-foot print from that and you'll find there is detail even when you put your nose against the print. That level of detail contrasts sharply with the super smooth bubbly buttery nothingness of the out of focus areas. This matters a lot more visually than if the out of focus areas are 5" blobs of nothing or 6" blobs of nothing (which is all the aperture-equivalence math will tell you).
Shoot a Canon 85/1.2 wide open on a small-format camera and compare it in that same print. There will be no comparison.
This is to say nothing of the character of the lenses available in medium format. The Contax 80/2 (https://digitaltransitions.com/fast-portrait-lens-phase-one/) has such a nice and unique render and the Schneider 130/2 IMAX projector lens that I love so much has a beautiful sing-songy swirly bokeh that I love for framing objects, especially those that are in a straight line (to provide visual contrast to the swirly bokeh).
All that said, if you want only to play the math game, which as a college student studying physics I know you must love (I roomed with a physics major back in college), you can take any 35mm lens (e.g. the famous 50mm f/0.7 Kubrick lens) and use it on an IQ3 100mp using the electronic shutter (https://digitaltransitions.com/iq3-100mp-electronic-shutter/). You just need one of the several bodies like the Univeralis that allow mounting the lens at any chosen distance, and, in some extreme cases a custom recessed lens board. The image circle of these small-format lenses is usually not much larger than the original small-format frame it was designed for, but technically you're getting a circle instead of the original small-format rectangle (and therefore a larger imaging area), and therefore your effective depth of field is shallower :).
No matter how you look at it medium format wallops small-format for bokeh.
*In case it's not obvious to other readers, by "contrast" I do not mean tonal contrast but the more generic definition of contrast (being strikingly different from something else, typically something in juxtaposition or close association).
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Hi Jack,
The leaf shutter probably has a hexa or pentagonal opening. Under short exposures it is in motion and may not open fully. Surprise if it can be seen.
Best regards
Erik
Can someone explain why at the same effective f/stop an in-lens leaf shutter would produce more angular bokeh than a conventional planer on-sensor shutter all else being equal? If anything I would have thought the opposite to be true.
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Doug,
Yes, MF bokeh is indeed very nice and I fully agree about the importance of the sharpness ratio.
Now the Canon 85mm f1.2 has a great look but is simply a poor lens technically compared to recent references such as the Nikon 105mm f1.4, Sigma 85mm f1.4, Otus 85mm f1.4 (although its bokeh has some issues resulting from the usage of aspherical elements) or for that matter a Nikon 70-200 f2.8 EFL shot at 135mm for example. The peak sharpness of these lenses is nothing short of amazing even in very large prints.
Do they equal MF? Probably not but they come a lot closer than the Canon.
That of course is assuming perfectly accurate focus on both sides. We all know that this is almost imoossible to achieve consistently with MF at wide apertures on even slightly moving subjects. So the reality is that 35mm will often win in the real world.
Cheers,
Bernard