mmkallio

Thanks to all who contributed to my last critique request! I'd like to have constructive critique again about this picture. I've had my fathers old Sigmatel 135mm/F1.8 lens (from early 70's) quite some time. I used it in the year 2000 with a film slr and since haven't bothered to use the lens until the day I took this picture of my wife. The Lens is not the sharpest by no means. At F1.8 it lacks really far behind the best lenses in sharpness. But the bokeh it produces is incredibly pleasing to my eyes. Of course the 135mm at F1.8 means the depth of the field is really narrow at this distance. The focus is in the eyes and because of the super narrow DoF models head is mainly in the out of focus area. That is intentional since I don't see too much point using this old manual lens except for it's bokeh. The picture was taken in a cloudy day. Light is all natural and I didn't have reflector with me. My wife did have very little make up. Just some mascara and eyeshadow I think. Picture is as is. I did not crop it. Comments and critique are again very welcome, thank you in advance! Mika

Thank you Mehmet! You have lots of really strong portraits in your album!

Really nice image. Strong yet balanced colors. Great timing and really nice composition. I rated this 7/7. World class image that just sinks into my permanent memory to work as a reference to similar setups in the future.

Thank you all so much for your comments. "Fill the frame" is often the rule I like to obey in portraiture, but this picture and the Petzval lens are all about the peculiar out of focus area. If I'd shot this with my 85mm F1.4 or with my 135mm F1.8, I'd agree with the tighter composition and cropped it. But because the bokeh effect is all lost by cropping, I just left the picture as is. As I said I had better composed shots from this shoot, but model had too "posed" expressions in those images. The crop looks nice though. Just that it doesn't look like it's taken with a Petzval lens.