No, I haven't suddenly developed a love for bugs, flowers and the other staples of macro photography, but one of the justifications I always hear for paying 3 times as much for the 85mm f/1.4D Nikkor over the f/1.8D version - despite tests suggesting the cheaper lens is actually slightly sharper - is that the bokeh produced by the f/1.4D is just so, so much better. Personally, I find the obsession with "bokeh" faddish and overdone, but I thought I might as well put the 85mm f/1.8D to the test, ergo this picture. Well, what do you think?
I think it looks just fine myself, as do the other examples in the same set. There's nothing in the performance I'm seeing here to justify the huge marginal expense of the 1.4D, and the only actual test I've seen of the two 85mm Nikkors hardly shakes my confidence - this blogger's readers ooh and aah over the 1.4D sample pictures, but I don't see anything more to their comments than the "It's the 1.4D so it must be better" rationalizations at work. Photography enthusiasts are as vulnerable to the placebo effect as any other group of people.
PS: For Canonites the situation is slightly different, though the consequences are the same as far as I can see. Even when used on a high-end camera like the EOS 1D Mark II, Canon's EF 85mm f/1.2L II does indeed seem to be sharper than the consumer-priced 85mm f/1.8, but not by enough to be noticeable under all but a minute set of circumstances, and what difference there is between the two lenses in "bokeh" can be attributed almost entirely to the fact that one opens up to f/1.2 while the other only(!) goes to f/1.8.
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