I took this portrait of my Mom while I was back home on leave. This was taken near the end of the day before the sun set in my backyard so I had some great lighting. I used a Rokinon 85mm f/1.4 lens which has an awesome depth of field and I have been using that to it’s full potential. Before I got this lens I had always wondering how some of the top pros got these awesome portrait photos where the focus point is so small and the rest of the image is gradually blurred and I could never figure it out. At first I thought maybe it was my camera but I have seen other picture taken with a Nikon D7000 with the same effects so it couldn’t have been that. Once I found this lens I finally understood; it’s all in the glass. My eyes are finally open to why so much weight is put on lenses as opposed to cameras. This lens is great and I definitely recommend it for taking portrait but remember it is a manual focus lens. This will definitely create a problem for people who need real fast focusing because it takes some getting used to if you have been using auto-focus a lot; at least it did for me. Not to mention being an f/1.4 it has a really small focus point so it is easy to mess up and have the picture not look right. I do have the automatic chip in this lens though which I think is a must and cannot be done without wasted effort without it. This will indicate when you focus point is in focus in viewfinder that way it is not just a guessing game. This is a single RAW image that was minimally processed in Photoshop CS6. All the lighting in this shot was also natural.
