Sony 400mm f2.8

[adriantyler]

hi bernard

i don't think the bokeh on the sony 400mm looks nice, and was about to get the 70-200 until i saw the pictures on steve huffs review.
however huff recons that the examples on his review are 'beautiful' so i it's in the eye of the beholder it would seem.

however, i am not with the detractors, it is a very important aspect of the image for me, 50mm has been almost impossible to resolve until the sony 50 1.4 came along... with my nikon i used to use the hasselbald distagon 50 with an adaptor, the sony 1.4 weighs about the same, but dosen't have the build quality of the old 'blad! still, it's got to the point where these electronic cameras are like domestic appliances.

adrian

[shadowblade]

You can't judge the bokeh until you shoot all three lenses side-by-side, with identical settings, against the same subject and background, at the same distance. Some backgrounds just make for bad bokeh, no matter the lens.

The closest we have are the samples on Matt Granger's blog http://mattgranger.com/sony400, specifically the full-body, front-on portrait against the street; even there, it looks like the Canon/Nikon shots were taken from a closer distance (she takes up more of the frame) and/or with a wider aperture (the size of the bokeh balls in the background appear larger), so the settings weren't identical. If you look at the close-up headshots from all three lenses, the background is blown way out of focus, but that isn't exactly a bokeh stress test. Try a chain-link fence, long grasses, leaves or rows of seats as a background, with a subject distance far enough that the background isn't completely blown out of focus, for a real stress test.

[BernardLanguillier]

I am re-assured, bokeh seems very nice in these samples. Great news!

https://www.dpreview.com/videos/0035702226/dpreview-tv-the-sony-400mm-f2-8-is-a-pretty-sweet-lens

Cheers,
Bernard

[149113]

The bokeh in here is quite good as is the AF speed and eye AF. Interested to what Canon comes out with next month

Sony 400mm f2.8 Review