Originally posted by Rondec I have always thought that "pixie dust" is a mixture of a lenses ability to have smooth transitions from in focus to out of focus areas, good contrast and micro contrast, and out focus rendering that is not overly busy. I don't think sharpness actually has much to do with this, even though many people focus on sharpness a lot.
My experience with the FA 77 and FA 31 suggests they do very well with these sorts of factors, even if edge sharpness isn't always perfect.
I'm not particularly sure it doesn't play a role - the central (and mid-frame) sharpness of the 43 and 77 is
very high at f/5.6-8 and at that aperture, the OOF background is still buttery smooth, which leads to a very noticeable 3D pop effect.
This is a strong crop at f/7.1 (it's a downscaled JPG weighing 6 MB so there are some artifacts*), from a friend - I'd rather not post the entire photo, sorry about that
:
The background is somewhere like 2-3 m away from the subject, I reckon. I was about 5 meters away or so. My friend's whole body takes ~2/3rds of the sensor length (I shot vertical). I did use fill flash (HSS, shutter speed was 1/800 at ISO 100) which also enhances the "pop" effect, though with HSS it's less noticeable in my very limited, I-suck-at-portraits experience.
*Not around the legs though - that's just hair
.