Mysteries of The King of Bokeh

Words and pictures by Eamon Hickey

This post is going to sound like it’s about photography, lenses, and real estate. It is not; it’s about something entirely different. The story begins yesterday when I read Mike’s post about the King of Bokeh (the Panasonic 42.5mm ƒ/1.7 lens), in which he footnoted a link to a real estate listing for “The Estate at King’s Point.” (This post won’t make much sense if you haven’t read that earlier post.) Mike’s story started some sleepy synapses firing in my increasingly creaky brain.

You see, my girlfriend, Donna, happens to own a seaside estate of her own in the form of an apartment in The Bronx, on the shore of Eastchester Bay. (Born and raised in New York City, she has never learned to drive, so when she decided to get a “beach house” for summer getaways it had to be located on a subway line!) Anyway, from Donna’s beach house in The Bronx, otherwise known as Apartment 2C, the easily visible shore about three miles across Eastchester Bay/Long Island Sound is…King’s Point. Two shores, visible to each other but widely separated. Wealth gaps. I won’t belabor the symbolism.

Huh, my sleepy synapses seemed to say. Wonder if “The Estate” can be seen from my girlfriend’s apartment? Given The Estate’s generous dimensions and lively architecture and landscaping, I was not surprised that I could find the place on Google Earth in about 30 seconds. Yep, pretty much straight across the bay from Donna’s apartment.

Wait. Didn’t I have The King of Bokeh for a month or two last year, when I was reviewing a Panasonic GF7 for the estimable fellows at Imaging Resource? And didn’t I use The King of Bokeh to take a picture I sorta’ liked of a Blue Moon rising over the bay one night that summer, when Donna and I were at the beach house? Search through Lightroom. There it is, big Blue Moon. Is The Estate somewhere in the picture? English major with evermore creaky brain now attempts very risky move: deploying trigonometry, however rudimentary, on a satellite image of Eastchester Bay. Known location of camera. Known horizontal field of view. Known object in photograph (Stepping Stone Lighthouse). Draw an angle in Photoshop. Holy smokes. I have taken a picture of The Estate at King’s Point using the King of Bokeh! Alas, the estate itself is obscured by trees, but the neighbor’s shack, a mere 15 bedrooms by the look of it, is clearly visible in both my picture and in the pictures from the real estate listing. Confirmed! (The houses are too small to see in this downsized JPEG, so you'll have to trust me.) 

Now, let’s get to what this post is really about. How does a fellow born and raised in California end up in a Bronx (Bronx!) apartment one lovely but random summer eve, taking a picture of a Long Island mansion without even knowing it, with a lens he possesses temporarily and accidentally, but which will be the subject of a single posting that also mentions the Long Island mansion in a stunningly unlikely aside, and which was written by the editor/publisher of a blog to which the California boy is also a Contributing Editor? Coincidence? The work of the supernatural? Some kind of as-yet-unexplained spooky action at a distance? Or just another example of the wonderful, ineffable mystery of this weird ride we’re all on? I dunno, but it tickles me fancy.

As a bonus, I also have a picture of Donna (on the right) that I took with the King of Bokeh (at ƒ/2.5) when she and a lifelong friend showed up at a party in dresses that suggested some kind of telepathic connection. It’s ineffable, that’s what it is.

Eamon

Eamon Hickey is...well, he already told you, a Contributing Editor of TOP.

©2016 by Eamon Hickey, all rights reserved

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Comments

[Miserere]

All I'm going to say is that the estate is a pretty good bargain for $100 million. It's the upkeep costs that would worry me! Why, you need a couple dozen employees to keep the house and grounds in order, and all those bathrooms clean!

Exactly how often do these people use the bathroom anyway? So many more bathrooms than bedrooms...

As for Eamon's conundrum, it's easy: Witchcraft. Mike, I would suggest dunking the Panasonic lens in water for an hour. If it still works after that, it's a witch! If it doesn't, then it wasn't a witch after all. Won't you be glad to find out?

[Benjamin Marks]

Plate o' shrimp. Love this post.

[Alun J. Carr]

If you're using micro-4/3 (MFT) cameras, and want the true King of Bokeh for portraits (with a wonderful glow to the highlights), buy a used Soviet Jupiter-3 1.5/50 lens in LTM plus an adaptor to MFT. The Jupiter-3 is a Soviet-manufactured 1940s Zeiss Sonnar (they dismantled the equipment in Germany and shipped it, together with press-ganged technicians, to the USSR), with its characteristic rendering wide open (stop it down, and it becomes very-sharp). On MFT, it becomes 100 mm-e and in terms of theoretical DOF, f/3. That makes it a near-perfect portrait lens, wide open. The focus-shift problem with stopping down classic Sonnars isn't an issue with manual focusing at taking aperture in MFT.

Of course, Zeiss make a modern version of the lens in Leica M-mount (C Sonnar T* 1,5/50 ZM), and with the T* coating will undoubtedly have superior contrast to the Jupiter-3, but the Jupiter-3 is a cheap way to experiment with the Sonnar design. NOTE: don't buy one in Kiev/Contax bayonet mount. Also, Lomography have started producing the Soviet version again, but at a price that will have you running for the genuine, modern, Zeiss item.

To see what the Jupiter-3 can do have a look at:

http://phillipreeve.net/blog/review-jupiter-3-50mm-1-5/

Alun

[David]

Plate o'shrimp.
That's why I come here, to learn new things!

[BH]

Nice photograph of the ladies.

[Ed Hawco]

I demand a 100% crop of the estate!
;-)