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.

This is a picture of my wife taken the second day after purchasing a Lomography New

Petzval 85mm F2.2 lens used here. It's a manual focus, or rather a manual

everything, art lens. Optical design of the lens is over 170 years old and apertures are

separate plates with holes that need to be inserted into the lens. It produces swirly

bokeh because of massive aberrations. It's not a fast (to shoot) lens. It's not the

sharpest lens either. Still I find myself being very exited and happy to shoot with it.

The day this image was taken was quite windy at times. Our 11 years old kid wanted

to assist us and I let her hold the diffusor. It was a struggle because of the wind and

because her height. There was also a lot of wasps around. My wife has a small fobia

of wasps and I guess I have the same problem. So we ran a lot because of the wasps

and I had to manually focus the lens over and over again. This shot was taken after I

told my wife to try to "look super beautiful". She bursted to laughter and I managed to

push the shutter button just the right time so she quite nailed the "super beautiful"

looks. :)

Editing was done with Capture One Pro 9. I added vignetting and did some dodge and

burn to skin and hair. The bokeh is not edited at all. All the bokeh in this picture comes

from the optical design of the Petzval 85mm at full open F2.2.

Critique and comments are very welcome. Due to the conditions I was not able to

frame this shot perfectly. I have pictures from the session with better composition and

with a better background. I just personally love this image because of the authentic

expression. Because of the swirl effect, I was not willing to crop this pic either.