Roger Hicks
Veteran
The quality of the out of focus image is something I didn't even consider until about 15 years ago, when I bought a 150/4.5 Apo Lathar and a friend remarked that it gave particularly attractive results in the out-of-focus areas. A few years afterwards, 'bokeh' became a buzz-word.
Today, I'm still not very sensitive to bokeh UNLESS it's (a) really bad, as with the Leitz Thambar with the centre spot in place and the wrong background or (b) grossly exaggerated so that a huge area of the image is wildly out of focus and obtrusively mottled.
Even in the latter case, I find I don't really care in most cases unless the lens is used at a silly-large aperture in totally inappropriate circumstances, usually in good light with an ND filter or shutter speeds of 1/4000 second or faster. In other words, in low or even mediocre light, shallow d-o-f goes with the territory, while in good light, there have to be quite compelling aesthetic reasons for using it. In particular, in good light, out-of-focus leaves with light peeking through them mostly range from the tedious to the execrable.
Of course compelling aesthetic reasons can exist, and they are sometimes brilliantly exploited. But am I alone in feeling that while out-of-focus backgrounds are one thing, they are very different from pictures where the out-of-focus background is, in effect, the picture, because nothing that is in focus has the slightest hope of drawing the attention?
All too often, it seems to me, the out of focus bokeh tail is wagging the photographic dog. I'm not against razor-thin depth of field -- I've used it myself sometimes, albeit with less success than I had hoped -- but it really does seem to me that all too often, at the moment, this cannot even aspire to the status of a gimmick but is (as Sparrow says) a cliché.
Others' views?
Cheers,
R.
Today, I'm still not very sensitive to bokeh UNLESS it's (a) really bad, as with the Leitz Thambar with the centre spot in place and the wrong background or (b) grossly exaggerated so that a huge area of the image is wildly out of focus and obtrusively mottled.
Even in the latter case, I find I don't really care in most cases unless the lens is used at a silly-large aperture in totally inappropriate circumstances, usually in good light with an ND filter or shutter speeds of 1/4000 second or faster. In other words, in low or even mediocre light, shallow d-o-f goes with the territory, while in good light, there have to be quite compelling aesthetic reasons for using it. In particular, in good light, out-of-focus leaves with light peeking through them mostly range from the tedious to the execrable.
Of course compelling aesthetic reasons can exist, and they are sometimes brilliantly exploited. But am I alone in feeling that while out-of-focus backgrounds are one thing, they are very different from pictures where the out-of-focus background is, in effect, the picture, because nothing that is in focus has the slightest hope of drawing the attention?
All too often, it seems to me, the out of focus bokeh tail is wagging the photographic dog. I'm not against razor-thin depth of field -- I've used it myself sometimes, albeit with less success than I had hoped -- but it really does seem to me that all too often, at the moment, this cannot even aspire to the status of a gimmick but is (as Sparrow says) a cliché.
Others' views?
Cheers,
R.
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