The same guy has a very impressive set of pictures taken with the Voigtlander 125 Macro on his K10D - my sort of bokeh!

link

The gap between the pre-flash and the main flash is of such a short duration (milliseconds) it's unlikely to be perceptible to your eyes. When you use the red-eye reduction flash you get a larger gap because your subject's eyes need time to contract between flashes. If you want to see the pre-flash in action then set the flash mode to trailing curtain sync and press the shutter while watching the flash - you'll see the pre flash, then a pause as the shutter opens for the metered length of time, then the main flash as the shutter closes again.

If your pictures look OK then you have nothing to worry about - everything's working just fine.

I think you'll find the camera you've bought has a 3.2MP sensor, meaning that even the highest quality JPEG's should come in at around 1-1.5MB each. Therefore, a 128MB card should fit an average of 80-120 images on it at the highest quality - more than enough I reckon!

I don't speak Cornish but I think even I get the gist of that!

Never mind, it'd be a dull old world if we were all alike...

I'd never heard of this Orton Effect - might have to give that a whirl.

And just to prove that everyone views things differently, I didn't particularly like the bokeh from that Helios-40 at all! Oh well, what is it they say about pleasing all of the people all of the time..?

Cheers for that Don. It certainly has a "dreamy" quality to it - quite different to a lot of the other lenses on this thread! The "busy" area in the top left corner reminds me of my FA43 a little, although the 85 seems slightly more pleasing to my eye. I have to say though, I'm sticking with my FA77 as my personal favourite...

Have you got any shots from the 85 soft? Don't think I've actually seen any on here before...

It certainly is

Although I don't fancy our chances of tying down a definitive "good" and "bad" bokeh as bokeh seems to be firmly in the eye of the beholder.

I'd have to go for the moon landing as it took place in '69 - the year of my birth.

I'll stick with good bokeh from my favourite bokeh lens, the FA77. Both of these were at f2.4 (a sweet spot with this lens I find) and I love the velvety-soft almost watercolour quality of the backgrounds.

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