Sony 100mm f/2.8 STF Field Test: It’s actually f/5.6, shoots like an f/4, yet delivers the smoothest bokeh

posted Friday, February 17, 2017 at 6:38 PM EDT

A taste for the finer things in life comes through experience, and the desire to move beyond the traditional mass-market standards. This can apply to fine wines, aged cheeses, fabulous french sauces, works of art and fine automobiles. It also applies to high-end camera lenses, which can offer a variety of subtle refinements perceptible only to those who know what to look for.

The Sony FE 100mm f/2.8 STF is just such a lens, and our friends at Sony were kind enough to send us a pre-production sample for Field Testing. It has an onboard apodizing filter, intended to smooth out the background blur, and thus the "Smooth Trans Focus" aspect in the lens name. This is a technology that's been around for some time, but Sony really pulled out all the stops on this one in order to bring you a lens designed to maximize this clever effect.

Did they succeed? With only a few days in which to bring you an initial gallery sampling and our first impressions on this intriguing lens, we uncovered some very interesting aspects regarding apodization in general, and learned a great deal about the positives of this incredible lens, as well as a few interesting trade-offs.

Read our full FE 100mm f/2.8 Field Test for all the details!