I'd argue if you're using Canon's 35mm F1.4 at anything other than F1.4 you're wasting a lot of money.
I hear the v2 rev is also very sharp compared to the original. Although I find the rendering of the original quite good enough.
I hear the v2 rev is also very sharp compared to the original. Although I find the rendering of the original quite good enough.
Depth of Field is a function of Aperture , Focal Length and Distance to plane of focus.
The focal length drives how wide the "scatter" of the blur is, so wide angle lenses like the 35mm have a very "soft" blur as opposed to something like a 400mm F2.8 which just obliterates backgrounds. This is also driven by how close you are focusing so you can shoot a 35mm F1.4 wide open, focusing around ~15ft away and the detail of the scene is very much preserved. It lets you focus on a subject and give them a slight "pop" of focus while keeping the rest of scene coherent.
I grabbed this random image from the 35L group on Flickr, they didn't include EXIF so I can't be 100% certain they shot it at F1.4 but it looks very close to shots I have at F1.4 from that lens.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/49830238@N04/25021998886/in/po...
It’s only the focal length and aperture that contribute to DoF. With a larger sensor you are typically using longer focal lengths since you need a longer focal length to get the same FoV. That being said, you also have the option of using movements on 4x5, so subject separation can be achieved by changing the plane of focus even when using a narrow aperture. There are some very technically accomplished examples of this at http://www.p1600.com/en/portfolio/london_5x4/ (not my photos), but on balance I think that these are more of a technical tour de force than an artistic success.
There's no way to know what aperture the photo you linked to was shot at, but it doesn't look to me like it would have to be particularly wide. Honestly, I find it a bit depressing that there are flickr groups fetishizing particular lenses.
Don't see any reason why the one I picked wouldn't be shot at F1.4.
Anyway, here's another random one that does have EXIF that shows what I mean. Just because you're shooting at F1.4 doesn't mean that everything is blown away.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jasoncowellphoto/5534870906
I guess you can call if "fetishizing" a lens if you want but it's a very popular lens for a reason.
Plus, look, I know that you didn't choose the photo for it's artistic qualities, but that photo sucks, and the comments on it are like "omg you have a 35L and the photos are sharp". Who the fuck cares if the photos are bad?
The vast majority of the photos in the group either have (i) pretty much everything in the picture in acceptably sharp focus (so that even if they were shot at f1.4, they didn’t have to be) or (ii) a close subject (so that a very wide aperture was not necessary to get good separation). Is it possible to imagine scenarios where you need f1.4 to obtain the desired effect? Yeah, sure. But they’re precisely the scenarios that rarely lead to good compositions. I.e., middle ground in focus and foreground and background out of focus.