Bokeh is not a 'thing'.

It seems to confuse a lot of people.
I think there was a thread on here, and another on FM - I reckon at least half the pics posted didn't show bokeh.
(how can that be a verb? I bokeh, you bokeh, they bokeh...)
 
bokeh
ˈbəʊkeɪ/
noun
Photography
noun: bokeh
  1. the visual quality of the out-of-focus areas of a photographic image, especially as rendered by a particular lens.
Origin...
 
DemiLion said:
Close but no cigar.
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Sorry but I'm old and I only achieved a certificate of second class education (CSE) in English. All I know bokeh is not a 'thing' Oh sh1t that's what the first guy said!!!
 
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redsnappa said:
Sorry but I'm old and I only achieved a certificate of second class education (CSE) in English. All I know bokeh is not a 'thing' Oh sh1t that's what the first guy said!!!
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You're correct in one sense. It is not an object.
But a noun does not have to be an object.

Purple, for instance...
... which can also be an adjective or a verb, unlike bokeh :)

I don't think you van bokeh something or have bokeh green.
 
Anyone for "doughnuts"? Typical circular OOF bokeh from a mirror lens, in this case the Tamron SP500mm.
1842022-e46fd6e5c6bbfc10.jpg

The answer is to choose your background so that the bokeh doesn't show up! (y)

1846870-c88a2a05fa69799b.jpg
 
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Peter your images reminded me of when I used to take images of birds on film using a mirror lens, most people looked at the bird and had no interest in the background
but the odd one or two would comment on the doughnuts in the in the out of focus highlights, I never really understood this because it was of no importance as it was the subject that mattered.
Now to my question were these images taken with a digital camera as I have been considering buying one to use on my Sony A7 with a suitable adaptor of course.

My apologies to the OP for going off at a bit of a tangent here but you seem like a very understanding chap so I didn't think you'd mind.

Cheers Bob
 
Bokeh is a relatively new 'term' in photography it didn't exist in the 80s but it's always been there. Everybody is jumping on the bokeh bus on YouTube "0h, lovely creamy bokeh". There is so much hype about it but mainly it's a marketing strategy and the pixel peepers placing the image under a microscope and people are lapping it up !

Of course, lens technology and quality is improving all the time which is a good thing for example with new developments such asapodization filters recently introduced by Fuji. However, what's really important is the primary subject and how you photograph the subject.
 
DemiLion said:
Very nice, except there's virtually no bokeh in that photograph at all. Aptly demonstrating that most people (wrongly) just think it's an (extremely) out of focus area.
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By the definition below I believe that you're incorrect. Technically any out of focus area has bokeh, it's just whether it's good quality/interesting or not. The fact that it's smooth/uniform does not mean it's not bokeh, just that it's uninteresting bokeh. Some folk think it's not bokeh unless you have the classic 'bokeh balls', but this is just one type of bokeh.

I guess you can interpret it how you wish though ;)

kendo1 said:
bokeh
ˈbəʊkeɪ/
noun
Photography
noun: bokeh
  1. the visual quality of the out-of-focus areas of a photographic image, especially as rendered by a particular lens.
Origin...
Click to expand...
 
If this was the BBC I'd have to say 'other definitions are available' :)
This was the first definition from Google.
 
kendo1 said:
If this was the BBC I'd have to say 'other definitions are available' :)
This was the first definition from Google.
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Agreed, but it appears to be the most commonly occurring definition, and it's the one on my computer's dictionary too :p
 
old bloke said:
Peter your images reminded me of when I used to take images of birds on film using a mirror lens, most people looked at the bird and had no interest in the background
but the odd one or two would comment on the doughnuts in the in the out of focus highlights, I never really understood this because it was of no importance as it was the subject that mattered.
Now to my question were these images taken with a digital camera as I have been considering buying one to use on my Sony A7 with a suitable adaptor of course.

My apologies to the OP for going off at a bit of a tangent here but you seem like a very understanding chap so I didn't think you'd mind.

Cheers Bob
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Hi Bob

These were taken some years ago on a Fuji S2 Pro dslr which used the Nikon F mount, so they'd be about equivalent to 750mm on the crop sensor. In my film days I used a Konica FC-1 slr and bought several Tamron lenses due to the Adaptall mount, since they had a better variety than Konica and you could get them cheaper secondhand. In the past couple of weeks I've bought an adaptor to try a Sigma 70-300 lens on my current Fuji X-T1, but it now dawns on me that I should be digging out the Tamron and try it as well! Sounds like a plan. (y)
 
I'm reminded of a Woody Allen film in which he was having difficulty getting appropriate psychotherapeutic help for his problem. The problem, as was clearly evident in the film, was that although everyone else and the rest of the world was in sharp focus, he was persistently badly blurred. He was suffering from bokeh.
 
That's a good one, Chris:D!

I hate to lower the tone, and I've realised from my internet research that 'bokeh' has become a bit of a craze. However, I'd like to have a go. My main areas of interest: birdies in the garden; old churches; concerts and low-light photography (not 'low-life', as a friend of mine recently misheard!)

Here's the tone-lowering: I'm probably on the way to a DSLR but at the moment, I have a Panasonic Lumix TZ55. It has F3.3 to F8; Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Manual... and Scenes, of course. What settings would anyone suggest to experiment with bokeh?

Any help much appreciated - thank you (A relative beginner;))!
 
Eltheza said:
That's a good one, Chris:D!

I hate to lower the tone, and I've realised from my internet research that 'bokeh' has become a bit of a craze. However, I'd like to have a go. My main areas of interest: birdies in the garden; old churches; concerts and low-light photography (not 'low-life', as a friend of mine recently misheard!)

Here's the tone-lowering: I'm probably on the way to a DSLR but at the moment, I have a Panasonic Lumix TZ55. It has F3.3 to F8; Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Manual... and Scenes, of course. What settings would anyone suggest to experiment with bokeh?

Any help much appreciated - thank you (A relative beginner;))!
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Set your camera to Aperture priority, aperture to the lowest (f3.3) and take a pic of something pretty with a few highlights in the background.
Flowers are normally pretty easy - daffs and bluebells at this time of year. Move around until you have an interesting background.
Backlit water droplets work well ( I sometimes use a water sprayer). Frontal sunlight on small flowers and leaves can work too.

Standard zoom lens on a D200, nothing brilliant but shows you don't need special lenses:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kendunton/8645986087/in/dateposted-public/
Contax Zeiss 1.7 50mm on a Nex 6, a bit more pleasing, just having fun to see what happens:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kendunton/24770034369/in/photolist-DJQUf6-ehobUx-ehob74-eho9ZV-eb1WrD

Edit:
I should have said you can get front bokeh as well.
 
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Thank you, Ken:)! I'll have a go! There'll be lovely flowers around here soon; I'm interested in Macro too.

:plus1:
 
It is an interesting subject from a learning viewpoint.
It helps you to understand composition, focusing, aperture and depth of field, and how your lenses work.
 
Peter B said:
Hi Bob

These were taken some years ago on a Fuji S2 Pro dslr which used the Nikon F mount, so they'd be about equivalent to 750mm on the crop sensor. In my film days I used a Konica FC-1 slr and bought several Tamron lenses due to the Adaptall mount, since they had a better variety than Konica and you could get them cheaper secondhand. In the past couple of weeks I've bought an adaptor to try a Sigma 70-300 lens on my current Fuji X-T1, but it now dawns on me that I should be digging out the Tamron and try it as well! Sounds like a plan. (y)
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A plan indeed I'll get myself a coffee and prepare for a session on that well known auction site.
 
snerkler said:
By the definition below I believe that you're incorrect. Technically any out of focus area has bokeh, it's just whether it's good quality/interesting or not.
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Yes, but the fact is that certain things have to exist/happen in order for the particular "lens rendering" to influence an image.

The BG must have smaller areas of defined/high contrast.
The BG must not be blurred to the point of eliminating definition.
The lens must be used at a wider aperture.

If those three things do not exist/occur, then the lens used is fairly irrelevant.

http://photographic-academy.com/creating-a-picture/85-creating-a-picture/148-bokeh
 
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sk66 said:
Yes, but the fact is that certain things have to exist/happen in order for the particular "lens rendering" to influence an image.

The BG must have smaller areas of defined/high contrast.
The BG must not be blurred to the point of eliminating definition.
The lens must be used at a wider aperture.

If those three things do not exist/occur, then the lens used is fairly irrelevant.

http://photographic-academy.com/creating-a-picture/85-creating-a-picture/148-bokeh
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Well again it depends on how you interpret the definition, and as such I stand by my original statement. From that link I would argue that the first image 'technically' does have bokeh, just that the bokeh is extremely uninteresting/poor quality. From the definition bokeh is the "quality of the out of focus area" so imo anything with an out of focus area has bokeh, but as those examples show it can range from very poor/uninteresting to nice creamy OOF, to distracting.

I would therefore argue that sites like that are misleading, IF you go by the strict definition. For the record I wouldn't talk about bokeh in the first image either, but 'technically' it's there just bland :p
 
snerkler said:
From the definition bokeh is the "quality of the out of focus area" so imo anything with an out of focus area has bokeh,
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Actually, bokeh refers to the way a particular lens renders out of focus points of light (small areas of high contrast). Otherwise it is just "blur" and has nothing to do with "lens quality/character."

http://photojpn.org/words/len.html
 
sk66 said:
Actually, bokeh refers to the way a particular lens renders out of focus points of light (small areas of high contrast). Otherwise it is just "blur" and has nothing to do with "lens quality/character."

http://photojpn.org/words/len.html
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Not sure what that link is supposed to show, but as already discussed there are several ways in which bokeh is defined. The one I quoted is the one that comes up most often and also in my dictionary so I choose to use this, as others do. Even that first link you posted agreed with this.

But tbh does it really matter, it's probably one of those terms where no-one truly knows the true definition :p Plus folk know what people are referring to when they mention bokeh and that's all that matters really ;)
 
sk66 said:
Yes, but the fact is that certain things have to exist/happen in order for the particular "lens rendering" to influence an image.

The BG must have smaller areas of defined/high contrast.
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Not necessarily. For example if sharp focus is the eyes of a headshot, the nose and ears drifting out of focus, the way that happens is bokeh, yet we'd call the whole head the subject. And why "smaller" areas? Why not bigger? I could go on...

The BG must not be blurred to the point of eliminating definition.
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That assumes that bokeh will only be present in the background, also that elimination of definition, while clearly a quality of an out of focus area, is not one of the qualities permitted to the concept of bokeh. I disagree.

The lens must be used at a wider aperture.
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To blur one part of an image with respect to another only needs a wider aperture if a smaller aperture hasn't a small enough depth of focus to do it. That depends on distance ratio and focal length. At 500mm for example f11 has a tiny depth of focus. F11 will also suffice with a 10mm lens if the focus is on a very near object, such as a flower. It's a common misconception that bokeh is all about aperture. That's like saying that exposure is all about aperture.
If those three things do not exist/occur, then the lens used is fairly irrelevant.
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This seems a very Procrustean definition of bokeh.
 
chris malcolm said:
Not necessarily. For example if sharp focus is the eyes of a headshot, the nose and ears drifting out of focus, the way that happens is bokeh, yet we'd call the whole head the subject. And why "smaller" areas? Why not bigger? I could go on...



That assumes that bokeh will only be present in the background, also that elimination of definition, while clearly a quality of an out of focus area, is not one of the qualities permitted to the concept of bokeh. I disagree.


To blur one part of an image with respect to another only needs a wider aperture if a smaller aperture hasn't a small enough depth of focus to do it. That depends on distance ratio and focal length. At 500mm for example f11 has a tiny depth of focus. F11 will also suffice with a 10mm lens if the focus is on a very near object, such as a flower. It's a common misconception that bokeh is all about aperture. That's like saying that exposure is all about aperture.

This seems a very Procrustean definition of bokeh.
Click to expand...

As stated before: you can have foreground bokeh, it does not have to be background.
 
snerkler said:
Not sure what that link is supposed to show, but as already discussed there are several ways in which bokeh is defined. The one I quoted is the one that comes up most often and also in my dictionary so I choose to use this, as others do.
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chris malcolm said:
Not necessarily....
This seems a very Procrustean definition of bokeh.
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I think you are missing the point... bokeh is a lens characteristic/quality (by any definition), it is not an image characteristic/quality as such (the image quality is a result). In order to evaluate/compare "bokeh" there has to be something there. Comparing a lens' bokeh based on images with completely blurred areas/no points of contrast(light) is like comparing sharpness of lenses with images where nothing is in focus or when there are no details to discern (white wall).

I use some lenses with pretty bad bokeh characteristics, and with them I can blur the BG to the point it doesn't matter. Because when blurred into non-existence (or eliminated to start with) the bokeh characteristics of the lens are not contributing to the resulting image.

Many fast primes have pretty bad bokeh characteristics. But bokeh, like many other (related) lens issues (CA, vignetting, sharpness wide open, etc), can be mitigated so as not be contributing/evident in the resulting image.


(And yes, bokeh can also exist in FG elements. sorry I left that out)
 
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sk66 said:
I think you are missing the point... bokeh is a lens characteristic/quality (by any definition), it is not an image characteristic/quality as such (the image quality is a result). In order to evaluate/compare "bokeh" there has to be something there. Comparing a lens' bokeh based on images with completely blurred areas/no points of contrast(light) is like comparing sharpness of lenses with images where nothing is in focus or when there are no details to discern (white wall).
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Not at all. I understand your point, I just disagree with it :p (except when the background is completely evenly blurred it's difficult to compare lens characteristics)
 
If it's not a thing then does it matter if I pronounce it wrong? And why does it read like a piece of mancunian slang?
 
sk66 said:
I think you are missing the point... bokeh is a lens characteristic/quality (by any definition), it is not an image characteristic/quality as such (the image quality is a result).
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I disagree. The concept first arose in the late 1990s. It was introduced to the general photographic public in a series of articles commissioned for "Photo Techniques" magazine by Mike Johnston. I like the definition now offered by Wikipedia. "In photography, bokeh [...] is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image produced by a lens." For reasons I will explain I prefer to rephrase that as "the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of a photographic image."

The primary characteristics of the kind of bokeh a lens will produce are most easily seen in the way out of focus small bright highlights are reproduced. They are reproduced as bright splodges in the shape of the lens aperture. The least obtrusive is a perfect circle, hence the attention given to best approximating a circular shape of aperture with curved iris blades and more of them. Because of the way the corners of the aperture polygon, even slight shallow ones, produce starbursts when overexposed, an odd number of blades is better.

The next indicator of bokeh quality in a lens is given by the way those bright bokeh circles are filled. A perfect lens will fill them as a featureless smooth disc. Since spherical lens elements are so much cheaper to produce, but suffer from spherical aberration, lens designers have chosen to correct spherical aberration by one or two corrective aspherical lens elements rather than just making every lens element geometrically perfect. Depending on how this correction is done, we can get hard edged discs, faded edged discs, discs with cut-onion-like rings inside, etc., plus the possibility of getting the best quality bokeh either in background blur or foreground blur. Nikon have a couple of DC (Defocus Control) lenses which allow the user to adjust this. Minolta (and now Sony) has the 135mm STF lens in which an apodization filter fades the edges of the bokeh discs to approximate Gaussian blurring, held to be the aesthetically nicest mathematically simple kind of bokeh. The Minolta Maxxum 7 film camera emulated this STF function in camera by a multi-exposure of a series of depth of focus bracketed shots. Fuji recently introduced a similar filter in their 56mm XF f1.2 APD lens.

The reason I said "mathematically simple" above was because you can easily do anything mathematically simple to a digital image with a computer, and you can do it very fast with a graphics processor. In other words just as we now have cameras which offer in-camera hand held panorama and HDR stitching, plus in-camera correction of lens chromatic aberration and perspective geometry, it will be possible to produce in-camera STF-like effects without requiring an STF lens. Now that Fuji have re-awakened interest in the apodization filter idea we can look forward to some of the more technologically radical camera manufacturers picking this up, not to mention the possibility of Photoshop plugin and smartphone apps. I see too that Laowa are rumoured to be developing a 105mm STF lens.

Given that there are more ways of producing pleasing bokeh than by using a lens I think it would be inappropriate to restrict the definition of bokeh to a lens quality.
 
kendo1 said:
bokeh
ˈbəʊkeɪ/
noun
Photography
noun: bokeh
  1. the visual quality of the out-of-focus areas of a photographic image, especially as rendered by a particular lens.
Origin...
Click to expand...

Exactly. It can't be an adjective as it is usually paired with an adjective to describe it.

Just as the word quality means nothing on its own. It could be good, bad or indifferent.


Steve.
 
No that we've established it's a noun, let's argue about how to pronounce it...
 
Not to be confused with "boak" or "boke", Scottish and Northern Irish English from Middle English "bolken", originally to retch or gag, now also to vomit.
 
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