Bad bokeh limits it's usefulness.

Great Bustard wrote:

NottsPhoto wrote:

Colour is excellent mind, And it gives a very nice feel... But the 35 1.4 which a colleague of mine has has noticeably better bokeh...

Thanks for the example! To me, the most obvious standout is that it appears a bit soft -- I didn't see anything off-putting in the bokeh. That said, next time you have an opportunity to use the 35 / 1.4L, shoot a scene, or couple of scenes, with both lenses and compare. That is, whatever you found objectionable about the bokeh in the photo above may have been scene dependent, and you'd have also found it objectionable with the 35 / 1.4L.

For example, PZ says this about the bokeh of the lens:

The out-of-focus highlight rendition is pretty clean with a slight outlining effect.

The situation changes a bit when moving towards the corners. The highlight discs deteriorate and the outlining effect gets emphasized.

The quality of the general blur in the focus transition zone is pretty good. The foreground blur is a bit busy whereas the more critical background blur is quite smooth and better than most zoom lenses for instance and also significantly improved over its predecessor. Such a good bokeh is quite unusual for a wide-angle lens featuring an aspherical element.

As opposed to what they say about the 35 / 1.4L:

The bokeh (the quality of the out-of-focus blur) is a primary aspect for an ultra large aperture lens. However, the Canon does not totally convince here. It is, of course, capable of producing a very shallow depth-of-field but especially the foreground blur is a bit nervous at f/1.4 whereas the background blur is generally smoother. Out-of-focus highlights can also be a bit nervous at max. aperture if they reside close to the image borders. The technical quality of the bokeh improves at f/2 and f/2.8 although the blur effect diminishes of course. To be fair - this characteristic is all not overly surprising because wide-angle lenses with aspherical elements are rarely good renowned for the quality of the bokeh. The lens performs better on APS-C DSLRs where the critical border portion is masked out.

Naturally, I'm not saying these comments are definitive by any means. Just saying that PZ's analysis is more in line with other reviews I've heard.

That is straight from the camera... So I would expect it to be a bit soft...     I wouldn't disagree with the review you cite...  but at f2 the 1.4 is better... And as they point out...  The bokeh gets worse as we move away from the centre of frame..  And that gives a effect that has not been welcome to my eye..

I would note,  that in every other respect... Except the expensive lens hood of course... The lens very good... And stopped down its excellent... But for me the purchase has been a big dissapointment due to the bokeh... So Its on the list to be replaced...

but of course... What with??