nikon 18.5mm depth of field and bokeh

I've browsed flickr and google for hours and am still undecided about this lens. I'm thinking of picking up a cheap v1. We had one in the family and ended up selling it. But with the release of a low light prime lens for Nikon 1 makes me interested in the system. Does anyone have a photo album of images of depth of field at various distances from the background? On nikon's samples of portrait, etc it seemed like the lens doesn't offer good bokeh or depth of field. However, I admit I could be wrong and would like to see more samples from people on here to make my own conclusions.

sony1799 said:

sony1799 wrote:

I've browsed flickr and google for hours and am still undecided about this lens. I'm thinking of picking up a cheap v1. We had one in the family and ended up selling it. But with the release of a low light prime lens for Nikon 1 makes me interested in the system. Does anyone have a photo album of images of depth of field at various distances from the background? On nikon's samples of portrait, etc it seemed like the lens doesn't offer good bokeh or depth of field. However, I admit I could be wrong and would like to see more samples from people on here to make my own conclusions.

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Todays primes are not bokeh champions, but some of our members are happy with results.

If you are purely after background defocus, you will get some with head shots. Not so much if you are further away from the subject. The focal distance is just too short even with a relatively large aperture. Bekeh quality is rather poor though -- it's busy and far from smooth (very similar to Nikon's 35mm f1.8 DX actually).

the lens is very good and increases the scope of use of the system. It does provide a good degree of background separation used wide open in portrait situations. the more distance between subject and background, the more blurring of course. It is not a background mush-out trickster though.

for me, there are advantages to this, as I am growing tired of seeing (and producing) the pervasive "1 eye in focus, mush all around that" head and shoulders. this lens gives the advantage of f1.8 for shutter speed (freeze subject movement) without the limitations of razor thin DoF.

The bokeh is ok. It will not get anyone going "wow, what a smooth background" on the dpr forums, but it will not damage a picture if the subject matter and composition are interesting.

if you absolutely need to use the V1 for "mush out" projects, get an adapter and a fast 50mm. I use FT1 with a 50mm f1.4 G and it works very well.

the 18mm f1.8 is a very good companion for the V1.

sony1799 said:

sony1799 wrote:

I've browsed flickr and google for hours and am still undecided about this lens. I'm thinking of picking up a cheap v1. We had one in the family and ended up selling it. But with the release of a low light prime lens for Nikon 1 makes me interested in the system. Does anyone have a photo album of images of depth of field at various distances from the background? On nikon's samples of portrait, etc it seemed like the lens doesn't offer good bokeh or depth of field. However, I admit I could be wrong and would like to see more samples from people on here to make my own conclusions.

Click to expand...

The bokeh, or shallow depth of field effect is minimal for a small sensor cameras. If you're looking for this effect don't bother. They offer the focal length but not the look.


This is a macro champion camera because of it's large depth of field. Reason why lots of P&S small sensor cameras have this feature built in.


I'll be all over a macro lens, with VR when it comes out.





If I want to shoot portraits, I grab my D600 full frame sensor camera and 85mm 1.4

It's similar to what an f2.8 zoom on APS-C would provide at the same focal length.

I'd agree with the text above. I shot a few test pictures with my new 18.5 lens I got yesterday and I may upload them here later this week, but in the mean time you can read this very positive (and subjective) user report:


Some of the pictures show very clearly the maximum amount of defocus you can hope for.

sony1799 said:

sony1799 wrote:

I've browsed flickr and google for hours and am still undecided about this lens. I'm thinking of picking up a cheap v1. We had one in the family and ended up selling it. But with the release of a low light prime lens for Nikon 1 makes me interested in the system. Does anyone have a photo album of images of depth of field at various distances from the background? On nikon's samples of portrait, etc it seemed like the lens doesn't offer good bokeh or depth of field. However, I admit I could be wrong and would like to see more samples from people on here to make my own conclusions.

Click to expand...

if you are looking for subject separation you need a large lens physical aperture, the physical aperture of this lens is tiny, 18.5mm / 1.8 = 10.27mm = 332 sqmm , a standard 50mm F/1.8 lens has a physical area of 27.8mm = 2428 sqmm which is roughly 700% larger.

The reason a large physical aperture is crucial for subject separation is that it produces an extremely sharp drop off in focus after the area of DOF so you get a perfectly focused subject, followed by a completely creamed out background. A lens with a small physical aperture has a very slow focus drop off after the DOF so eventhough the background is out of the DOF area, most of the elements in the background can still be recognized.

In my opinion, the bokeh is a little busy. However, it's not too distracting, and depends on the background to a large extent. Some of my pictures, like food, where you are trying to get a clean fade front to back, it does a good job. The busier the background, the busier the bokeh. As for separation the picture of my daughter below was taken very close to her, probably 6 feet from her face. It has greatly increased the usability of the system for me in lower light. It is also incredibly cheap in comparison to similar lenses for other mirrorless options.

Like you I was undecided by this lens and I had initially ignored the CX cameras. But a bargain price in Jessops UK (now gone....) was too good to miss (J1 + 3 lenses).


So now I'm loving the speed of the J1 compared to a normal point and shoot and the 18.5mm just makes it that bit better again than a normal pocket camera. I've even got very quick at changing ISO and modes etc in the menus now so using it very manually with this lens (but still have no use for the silly motion snap shots, but the smart photo can be quite good for the kids moving around)

Get one and enjoy it for what it is, just do not compare to a 50mm F1.2 on full frame..... (it's like saying a Golf GTi is good, but a McLaren is better...)