Learning bokeh

Just logged-on and found this thread flourishing in it's second day! - I find it quite amazing how so many can find so much time to discuss trivia!:rolleyes:....whatever happened to all the meaningful stuff -- e.g. 'what shall I take on vacation?'.....'what shall I buy next-to impress you all with?'. I'm afraid some of the 'deep' stuff - of late surpasses my intellectual standing!:D
Dave
 
MikeL said:
OOF stuff can't make a photo, but to me, it can break a photo if it is too noticeable and distracting. Shouldn't be too noticeable. One thing I like about medium and larger formats is that the OOF stuff is soft but things are still recognizable- a chair in the background is still a chair (unless wide open, long focal length)- and not too abstract.
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Dear Mike,

Yes, that's pretty much the way I feel.

Cheers,

R.
 
Dave Wilkinson said:
Just logged-on and found this thread flourishing in it's second day! - I find it quite amazing how so many can find so much time to discuss trivia!:rolleyes:....whatever happened to all the meaningful stuff -- e.g. 'what shall I take on vacation?'.....'what shall I buy next-to impress you all with?'. I'm afraid some of the 'deep' stuff - of late surpasses my intellectual standing!:D
Dave
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Yes, a "what bag for my best bokeh lens" thread is overdue...;) Truthfully though if anything this thread just goes to show that there are as many opinions as there are eyeballs....
 
bmattock said:
It is true that your eyes cannot focus on everything at once, but one has to concentrate to notice that effect with one's eyes. Typically, the brain compensates, so the average person thinks they have sharp vision all the time, as if their eyes were 'stopped down' and they had maximum 'DoF'.

I have one eye that is still a bit wonky from diabetes and my eyeglasses prescription is not right for it - yet I can't get a new prescription made because it hasn't settled down and keeps changing. If I close my 'good' eye and think about it, I am quite aware of how poor my eyesight is in the other eye. If I leave both open, my mind compensates and I seldom notice that one eye is not anywhere near as sharp as the other. The mind is a fascinating and generally useful liar.

In that manner, I believe that the human eye / mind combination will often 'not notice' or ignore out-of-focus areas on a photograph, just as it does with what it sees in the 'real world'. If it isn't a jarring juxtaposition, it simply ignores it.

I believe that excessively OoF areas on a photo will cause the mind to stop ignoring OoF and transfer control to the consciousness to deal with. That's when people 'notice' out-of-focus areas and then they have to decide if it helps or hurts the photograph as a photograph. I think it is often done to excess, as I mentioned earlier. However, having said that, there is nothing wrong with excess if that is actually the intent of the photographer. But I think that quite often, intent is absent. Some tend to use the lens wide-open in order to get that '3D' feeling, without thinking about to what extent they could control the effect creatively. Like covering a Christmas tree with decorations - I've seen some that looked like a metalocalypse. There really is such a thing as 'too much', IMHO.

With regard to the word 'bokeh' itself - I sincerely doubt that I understand the word properly in the sense it may have been originally intended in Japanese. When I was learning photography as a youngster, I never heard the word at all. However, it has become useful to refer to 'pleasing rendition of out-of-focus areas' as 'bokeh'. I at least know what that means, and understand that concept, even if that is not properly 'bokeh'.
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wonderful! thanks for the info..
However I think you should vary more examples to your writing much more interesting !
 
i've done the super bokeh, only got one hair in focus thing and moved on as most of us have but i do still hold out of focus rendering high on my list of priorities when choosing a lens.

i like lenses that give a nice smoothness when slightly out of focus - when it's more about a selective zone of focus rather than a heart melting background.

lenses that produce double lines to edges or doughnut highlights to me ruin what would have been a good shot if that rendering was more neutral.

click through to link to bigger view







PS. I read a blog rant somewhere that talked about the new "f8 and be there" has become "f1.2 and be lazy" :)
 
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nome_alice said:
i've done the super bokeh, only got one hair in focus thing and moved on as most of us have but i do still hold out of focus rendering high on my list of priorities when choosing a lens.

i like lenses that give a nice smoothness when slightly out of focus - when it's more about a selective zone of focus rather than a heart melting background.

lenses that produce double lines to edges or doughnut highlights to me ruin what would have been a good shot if that rendering was more neutral.


PS. I read a blog rant somewhere that talked about the new "f8 and be there" has become "f1.2 and be lazy" :)
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Yes, I think that 'more neutral' is exactly it.

In other words, there's 'bad bokeh' (doubling, etc.) and there's neutral bokeh. The bokeh is best which is least obvious.

The quality of the out of focus image is NOT the same as ultra-shallow depth of field with stomach-churning blur forming most of the image.

And I love 'f/1.2 and be lazy'.

Cheers,

R.
 
coming from a small sensor camera where everything was in focus, i was delighted when i started with rangefinders and found i could make that selective... my eye started to become critical when i noticed even at f/8, i could tell where i had focused -- it was most definitely not the same as shooting a small sensor camera.

so i started to shoot everything i could wide open to hone my skills and instincts and along the way i fell in love with the look.

ulrikft's example is exactly why i love it.

is this wrong?

am i wrong in simply shooting to please myself, not giving a toss what any of you think?
 
cam said:
is this wrong?

am i wrong in simply shooting to please myself, not giving a toss what any of you think?
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If you like it and it is what you intend, then keep doing it and enjoy yourself. Just be aware that there are people for whom the joy of max bokeh all the time has worn off, and they may not enjoy your photos. If you don't mind that, no problem. You're not the first I've heard say that, BTW. Some people apparently shoot wide open all the time, and that's their preference. It's all up to you to decide what you like.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Yes, I think that 'more neutral' is exactly it.

In other words, there's 'bad bokeh' (doubling, etc.) and there's neutral bokeh. The bokeh is best which is least obvious.

The quality of the out of focus image is NOT the same as ultra-shallow depth of field with stomach-churning blur forming most of the image.

And I love 'f/1.2 and be lazy'.

Cheers,

R.
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Hi Roger,
I have been following this thread to see if any ideas followed mine and I think that you and Nome Alice have arrived.
My def of Bokeh is "the subjective quality of the out of focus gradient". I think that this avoids the limitation to spectral highlights and includes all the tonal gradients. Granted the spectral highlights are where you are going to see the nasties, but to me it is the drift of the out of focus, from the focus plane to the background or foreground that will seem natural or not.
What seems natural to us may have to do with the slope of the gradient and whether the slope is smooth or jaggy. I think it also has to do with the size of the print and probably viewing distance, because COC and enlargement factor are involved.
BTW, I have some lenses where the foreground Bokeh is better than background Bokeh.
Bob
 
This morning I noticed something about the way that I see. I was reding while having my coffee and chanced to glance at the rest of the room behind what I was reading and because of this thread, started to look at the bokeh. First of all, I wear reading glasses, so this isn't the naked eye focusing where I look. I have worn glasses 27 years and never thought to notice the Bokeh for what is beyond the corrected range. That means that I have been conditioned, molded and brainwashed into expecting reality to look the way that I see it. This I suppose, is what I would call natural and it is pleasing.....probably what I'd like to see in my photos.
The question it poses is, for those of you that wear corrective lenses, do you think it has an influence on the Bokeh you want to see in your images?
Bob
 
Bob Ross said:
This morning I noticed something about the way that I see. I was reding while having my coffee and chanced to glance at the rest of the room behind what I was reading and because of this thread, started to look at the bokeh. First of all, I wear reading glasses, so this isn't the naked eye focusing where I look. I have worn glasses 27 years and never thought to notice the Bokeh for what is beyond the corrected range. That means that I have been conditioned, molded and brainwashed into expecting reality to look the way that I see it. This I suppose, is what I would call natural and it is pleasing.....probably what I'd like to see in my photos.
The question it poses is, for those of you that wear corrective lenses, do you think it has an influence on the Bokeh you want to see in your images?
Bob
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Dear Bob,

This is a fascinating question, and probably of fundamental importance. The only trouble is, I fear it almost falls into the old philosophical realm of "Is the way I see red the same way as you see red?"

You'd need a huge sample of people with different eyesight faults, and scores of pics to see what bokeh they liked. There has to be a Ph.D. in this one!

Cheers,

R.
 
Bokeh is like custard: people often confuse it with ice-cream, and the lactose-intolerant will demonize it to the death.

Chocolate, vanilla, plain...I love it. Just as long as some nut doesn't come up with wasabi custard, all's well in the Universe :)
 
Gabriel M.A. said:
Bokeh is like custard: people often confuse it with ice-cream, and the lactose-intolerant will demonize it to the death.

Chocolate, vanilla, plain...I love it. Just as long as some nut doesn't come up with wasabi custard, all's well in the Universe :)
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Have you ever had chawan mushi? Now THERE'S a savoury custard.

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Dear Bob,

This is a fascinating question, and probably of fundamental importance. The only trouble is, I fear it almost falls into the old philosophical realm of "Is the way I see red the same way as you see red?"

You'd need a huge sample of people with different eyesight faults, and scores of pics to see what bokeh they liked. There has to be a Ph.D. in this one!

Cheers,

R.
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It certainly supports the idea that all live in a separate reality:) I do think that over the five decades that I have enjoyed the craft, I have changed in what I like in a photo. Some of that is learning to be aware of the various qualities (Bokeh or highlight detail fall off gradients, etc.), but some is the way my vision has changed and I have accomodated to it.
In the old previsualization school we imagined what the finished print would look like, when we took the time. That involved our inner vision-meta vision-mind's eye. I wonder to what extent our outer vision accomodations imapact our imagination's image generator, that we use for previsualizing. Today it is easier for me to chimp than previsualize:eek:
Bob
 
Gabriel M.A. said:
Bokeh is like custard: people often confuse it with ice-cream, and the lactose-intolerant will demonize it to the death.

Chocolate, vanilla, plain...I love it. Just as long as some nut doesn't come up with wasabi custard, all's well in the Universe :)
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Then there is the subjective quality of the melt gradient of pizza cheese:D
Bob
 
Following a couple of bokeh tests on the forum (very interesting -- thanks guys), I can't help feeling that bokeh has been 'ghetto-ized' into 'extreme out of focus'. For me, this is the least important (although most easily illustrated) aspect of bokeh. What matters to me is that the o-o-f areas do not obtrude at more reasonable apertures: a smooth transition at f/2.8 to f/8 matters a lot more than a more or less uniform (and usually nauseating) wall of blur behind the principal subject at f/2, f/1.4 or faster.

Cheers,

R.
 
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