I'm glad you mentioned that you shot this on a new and different lens, because otherwise, I would probably have been trying to figure out why it looks so different.

The shots don't look at all to me like candids; they look like carefully arranged and shot posed pseudo-candids. Very good, mind you, but staged.

I can only assume that either they aren't actually candid (less likely and more boring), or for some reason, my brain associates shallow depth-of-field with posed photography.