BTW, those fuzzy disks of out of focus light points in the background are examples of something about which much to do is sometimes made regarding not much--usually among very techy photographers while discussing the finer merits of lenses. The term BOKEH is thought to be an aberration of a Japanese word that does not quite translate to English. But Bokeh is sometimes used within these discussions as a judge of the desirability of lenses. This old recycled Minolta 80-300 zoom lens with 2x teleconverter affixed to a Sony NEX5 body is an unusual marriage of analog and digital technology that provides marvelous technology on-the-cheap.
It passes the bokeh test in my book, although the starkness of the bokeh pattern is not accurately displayed due to the lower resolution of the image displayed here versus the high-res of the image as captured. This inadvertent manipulation of the digital raster can also result from raster noise when using higher ISO settings with digital cameras--as the quality falls off roughly equivalent to the way apparent grain similarly increases with film. I sometimes use the effect intentionally to emphasize such things a water drops in macro images as the undetermined flower pic I posted a few posts ago.
Everything can become a tool if you know when and how it happens. This is part of the quest. At high resolution these bokeh dots appear much softer--making the lens nice for portraits and such where you might want an unobtrusive bokeh in the background. Knowing just a little physics can help a photographer who must operate on a budget. Read previous blog posts for more of my own slant on all such issues.
There are subtle differences in the displayed appearance of these two seperate images. In upcoming posts I will also discuss how such features as Dynamic Rage Optimization DRO settings can take three different images within fractions of seconds of one antoher and combine them to good effect for such photographs.