It's all passed in a blur ...

How on Earth did we manage before bokeh? And I'm old enough to remember a time before HDR. How we suffered!
 
jon ryan said:
How on Earth did we manage before bokeh? And I'm old enough to remember a time before HDR. How we suffered!
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HDR and bokeh aren't really comparable though are they? HDR is an invented technique whereas bokeh has existed for as long as photography even though there seems not to have been a specific word for it outside Japan before 1997.
 
viewfromthenorth said:
I'm clearly in the minority in not giving a flying f*** about bokeh....
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I'm still not clear as to what it is, although apparently 'creamy' is good for some reason. And, no, I am not asking for a detailed explanation.
 
Tha article is good & perceptive, and I have found that it's natural to use relatively complex construction zoom lenses at small apertures to reduce obvious unpleasant bokeh, while shooting with simpler primes wide open or nearly so, for the pleasing background blur.

For example, my Nikon 28-85 doesn't have nice bokeh, but is really sharp at f13, where I'll normally try to use it, even if it means pushing ISO a bit.
Banburybridge- by Toni Ertl, on Flickr

While my Nikon 135 f2.8 has lovely bokeh wide open, becoming much more ordinary and less attractive as it's stopped down.
Mono Feb 2017--2 by Toni Ertl, on Flickr
 
Interesting article. Thanks for posting.
 
Then there's the issue of focal length. For bokeh by the bucketful, nothing beats long, fast lenses. This helps explain the huge popularity of 300mm ƒ/2.8 lenses routinely used at their widest aperture for portrait photography in Japan, never mind the need for a bullhorn to talk to your model.

Many Japanese bokeh connoisseurs, however, find this too much of a good thing. Rather than totally blowing away a background or foreground, they're interested in subtly altering it.
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shame we've regressed into bokeh overload over the last 20 years
 
I think the excited overemphasis on bokeh has come about because if all your friends have expensive phone cameras or compacts and you've gone and spent a great pile of money on an expensive exchangeable lens camera and a few lenses, then you really want to be able to justify your expensive gear by being able to take a photograph that will instantly be recognisable as something their phones etc. couldn't possibly take. Hence the popularity of extremely blurred bokeh, misty waterfalls, star trails, and the miniaturized "toyshop" look you can get with tilting lenses.
 
chris malcolm said:
I think the excited overemphasis on bokeh has come about because if all your friends have expensive phone cameras or compacts and you've gone and spent a great pile of money on an expensive exchangeable lens camera and a few lenses, then you really want to be able to justify your expensive gear by being able to take a photograph that will instantly be recognisable as something their phones etc. couldn't possibly take. Hence the popularity of extremely blurred bokeh, misty waterfalls, star trails, and the miniaturized "toyshop" look you can get with tilting lenses.
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In some cases these are more popular because they're just easier to do now, though use of bokeh has been around a LONG time. The horrid tilt-shift effect is available on every instagram account and similar, and it's an effect I always associate with crappy phone pictures, even when a DSLR has been used. I doubt anyone is spending hundreds of pounds on a f1.0 lens just to create an effect that isn't easily possible with a phone.

The bokeh example I posted was shot with a 1970's or 1980's (can't remember which) Nikon 135mm AIS manual focus lens. :)
 
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Bokeh has been around since lenses were invented, regardless of the coining and usage of the term. It's a vital component of the character of a lens for photography, since along with other attributes it affects our emotional responses to an image. For those who are a bit behind, it refers to the character of out-of-focus areas, and may show different characteristics depending on how the shot was taken. It can be pleasing or ugly, but if you care about your photography you have to be sensitive to it. It's inherent in lens photography, unlike the blurry waterfall gimmick which is entirely optional these days with fast film (whoops - sensors) and is a product of the chosen shutterspeed ...
 
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Does this mean that 500mm / f8 mirror lens 'doughnut's will be coming back into fashion soon? Can I pull mine out of the darkest depthsof the cupboard yet?
 
Stuart M said:
Does this mean that 500mm / f8 mirror lens 'doughnut's will be coming back into fashion soon? Can I pull mine out of the darkest depthsof the cupboard yet?
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I can't remember those doughnuts being "fashionable", I think they were just accepted as a feature because mirror lenses were not that common.
 
There's nothing wrong with those donuts on the right image. As Richard said, they are just accepted because they're a feature of the lens.
 
sphexx said:
I can't remember those doughnuts being "fashionable", I think they were just accepted as a feature because mirror lenses were not that common.
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Pink Floyd ~ Obscured by Clouds (released June 1972). Sales of 500mm / f8 mirrors spiked that same year.
 
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