What an aperture of 1.8 does to a photo

What an aperture of 1.8 does to a photo, originally uploaded by Digital Monk.

Had the pleasure of meeting Tara - a Flickr friend, yesterday. She's in town and we had a real fun evening photowalk in Swyambhunath. Talked about a variety of things, mostly photography and flickr. Good stuff.

We swapped cameras and to say the least, I went bonkers with her 50mm, f/1.8 lens! That lens produces some SERIOUS bokeh!! (see above for proof :-P). Thanks to her for letting me try out her equipment, I'm now convinced that my next lens should be a 50mm f/1.8.

I was clicking shot after shot with the lens and got the image on the left. The bokeh looked amazing but something was missing in the photo. So I asked Tara to place her hand next to the area of focus and click - the shot on the right. Liked both the so much, ended up merging them.

I had tried similar shots with my 70-300mm tele lens before - Feel and Touch. But I like this result much better.

Must must get this lens! :-)