Yeah, a lot of the older fast aperture manual focus primes have very odd bokeh... the 28/2, 35/1.4, and 50/1.2 are probably the most obvious cases. The bokeh has been "refined" over the years but I find the older lenses have a lot more character (as useless and subjective a quality as that is...).
In addition to the psychedelic bokeh the 50/1.2 has really bad coma. Nikon made the 58/1.2 Noct-Nikkor specifically to correct this, and the result is a lens that costs $3,000 used. lolz.
It's kind of amazing how sharp mine is at 1.2, though it's obscured a bit by lowered contrast and some "blooming".
Thanks man. Had to manipulate the hell out of that one to even out the exposure but I think the work was worth it. Good thing the D700 RAWs have so much headroom.
I have had a canon 500d now for almost 3 years and would like to change before I hit 10k shutter actuations. The camera has been well looked after and still performs flawlessly.
My only complaint is the crappy layout of the buttons, the rubbish noise at higher ISO's and general bordem.
What would you guys recommend I changed to? I need to stay with Canon as I have invested in some decent lenses.
Of course you may ask. The guy on the left? But then again I did regret not focusing on the girl. Guess I was too busy trying to not make her notice me pointing the lens at her...
On it's own that is a tricky composition as the girl in the foreground is dead center, bright (eyes tend to focus first on the highest contrast or brightest point of the image) and not out of focus enough while the focused parts are pushed out of the frame.
You can get that kind of image to work but it's not easy. Good framing and guiding the viewer's eyes to the main subject like in this:
This is the kind of feedback I'm looking for when I post here. This thread made me go from a "never-cared-about-it" state to a "wow-I'm-starting-to like-this" state, but I really have no clue about the non-technical side of things.