This is well trod ground with me so if it sounds familiar, it is. The reality is though, as I go back through old files, theories solidify into fact and that is something worth sharing.
Features and benefits were drummed into me in my early retail days.
Features are what they seem, an actual thing that stands out in a product, place or situation.
A lens has a fast aperture; feature.
It is auto focus; feature.
It is small; feature.
Benefits are the actual positive or beneficial effects of those features, which a salesman will use as the selling point. Just saying it has something means little, explaining how that helps you is the key.
The lens allows you to exploit low light situations or use shallow depth of field; benefit.
The lens focusses fast and accurately; benefit
The lens can be put in a pocket; benefit.
The next level though is the hidden benefit, something you need a deeper understanding of the item to know, becasue it is not on the packet.
A lens has the feature of a fast aperture with the benefits mentioned above. Great, all lenses on that format will have that feature and its benefits, but are they all the same?
The Olympus 17mm, a lens I believe the designers made specifically for fly-by street shooting, has a hidden benefit. It has what I will call “long draw” or slow transition Bokeh. This means that the benefit has a second benefit, one that mitigates the negatives of the feature when its benefit is not a benefit…….. if that makes sense.
You can exploit the low light gather benefit of the f1.8 aperture, but you do not have to be overly concerned that the shallow depth of field benefit is a problem, has teeth even.
This image was shot at f2.8, with manual focus set to about 1m. The woman in front is the best point of focus (I assume), but the man on the left and woman on the right are also workable elelements. The woman in particular is not in focus fully, but she is still a part of the story and the point where the plane of best focus transitions, is very organically applied. In other words, all elements work in harmony, nothing jangles and the technical “process” is well hidden. Even the girl in the immediate background is coherent, but natural looking. I feel that even at f1.8, this would still have worked.
The image below is one of my favourite examples of the Panasonic Leica 15mm’s ability to do exactly the opposite. The Leica is a little wider, so logic would dictate that its background transition would be less dramatic, but it is actually a better lens for “snapping” the main plane of focus out from the background.
The tree children look like they have been literally cut out and layered onto a background image. The background is not totally out of focus, but it is clearly not on the same plane as the front. This makes the Leica an ideal wide portrait lens, so it havs become part of my editorial day kit, but for wide open street shooting, it is too twitchy. When I look at image made by this lens, i first see the sharp, then the soft, then come back to the sharp again often startled by its rendering. This does not happen with the 17mm.
Many modern lenses are designed for fast transition “creamy” Bokeh as a benefit. This is a benefit most of the time, but sometimes, especially when you are trying to tell a story, add context or include layers, it tends to be finicky and unforgiving.
This image, one of the best I have to illustrate this effect (benefit), was taken wide open in dark dreary light. The woman in the middle is pleasantly renderred and seems the central point of the image. The actual point of focus is the back of the mans Kimono (see how sharp his shoulder is), which wide open should render the woman quite out of focus.
All lenses have a personality, which is by definition neither a feature or benefit, just an accent towards things done beter or worse. Getting to know your gear allows you to use these personailty traits to your advantage.
Another immediately before. The lens was set at 1m f1.8, putting the man in perfect focus, the woman about a metre out. The people in the background are still easily identifiable. The thing I often see with this lens, is how delicate fine details are even if they are a little out.
Want a natural, organic, smooth street image without twitchy Bokeh?
The 17mm Olympus is as good as you will find. Use zone focussing (which its old school depth scale can help with) and a wide-ish aperture and you are good to go. The combination of long transition Bokeh and warm natural, slightly dense colours give the image a gentle, old fashioned look.
This image was taken at f2,
as was this,
but intriguingly, so was this.
Want a semi wide angle lens with the ability to hero the central subject(s) against a messy background with that modern look?
Grab the Leica 15mm which gives you that “poppy” 3d look, bright colours and a lightness of tone, all adding to the illusion of being sharper than the Oly, which it is not.
Other differences? I would grab the Leica with flat light, where it adds an almost Fuji like ability to handle dullness with aplomb, the Oly on the other hand loves to tame strong light.
The 17mm at f1.8 (God only nows why I shot a whole series at f1.8 in mid day sun, but I did). I dabbed a little sharpness on the clock, but otherwise as shot.
And later at f8 when I got on top of it. Both work as urban landscapes, which should not be possible.