Bokeh is dead - Long live SOFA!

[aizan]

ooh, you're confusing bokeh with OOF circles. bokeh is the "appearance of OOF objects", not necessarily a visible disc coming from a point of light. backgrounds are often not pockmarked with contrasty, point light sources, so you can end up with a picture that has smooth bokeh from a lens that creates ringed OOF circles.

 

[Doug]

aizan is right; any and all blur due to out of focus is "bokeh". Bokeh has lots of different looks depending on the oof objects themselves, the distance to these objects, the light, the lens and its aperture, and probably other factors. Some lenses produce disks of OOF point light sources or reflections that are brighter around the outside than in the middle, and depending on the nature of the OOF background may produce bokeh that is characterized as "unsettled." If the disks are brighter in the center, it tends to have a smoother look. But the OOF blur is all bokeh, disks or no...

Edit: I had read Rockwell's comments on bokeh before, and looking it over again now. he does offer a very simple explanation of the spherical aberration effects, but the very simplicity of his explanation is, well, over-simplified. In my view, you can't draw the lines so sharply and say that one kind of spherical aberration produces bad bokeh and the opposite aberration gives good bokeh. There are factors other than spherical aberration at work, and bokeh isn't just good/neutral/bad, but is just different in various ways.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

You're right. My bad. Like Galileo Galilei is quoted to have said in the Spanish-speaking world: "y sin embargo, se mueve..."

 

[StuartR]

BOKEH FOHEVAH represent! Actually, I like the term becuase it is funny, particularly if you understand japanese. It basically means fuzzy, but you can use it about people too...basically meaning that they are senile. So from now on when you talk about "bokeh afficianados" you will have to specify if you are talking about lenses or people who have a penchant for fogeys.

 

[ClaremontPhoto]

Hyacinth Bucket sums it up best.

(Brit TV)

 

[JohnL]

Bokeh.
We already know what it means, and we don't need another word, much less a TLA.
(TLA = Three Letter Acronym, not necessarily exactly three letters. An example of recursion)

 

[Jocko]

Hyacinth Bucket sums it up best.

(Brit TV)

Pronounced Hyacinth Bokeh?

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Pronounced Hyacinth Bokeh?

Yoh pr-bly ry.

 

[ClaremontPhoto]

Not Hyacinth Bucket 'the lady of the house'.

 

[sf]

I vote for Cooke LF lenses' soft focus bokeh. mmmmmm. My dream lens for MF would be a real nice soft focus, mamiya glass, for an RZ67. The ultimate portrait camera.

Too bad I could buy. . . well pretty much any desirable RF for the price of the cheapest Cooke lens.

 

[StuartR]

Shutterflower -- the market is great for Hasselblads these days, have you considered a 110/2 planar for the 200 series cameras? I got a 203FE and 110/2 lens for less than the cost of a new leica lens...had I bought it new 5 years ago it would have cost around 10,000.

 

[Doug]

mmmmmm. My dream lens for MF would be a real nice soft focus, mamiya glass, for an RZ67. The ultimate portrait camera.

Does Mamiya offer a soft portrait lens for the RZ? I've been rather tempted by the 120mm f/3.5 for Pentax 67 that is softest wide open and gradually sharpens to around f/8, and is said to have a very pleasant kind of sharpness from there to the minimum aperture. But, it has a manual diaphragm and apparently a focus shift as the aperture changes... sounds a little awkward to use.

 

[jdef]

For me, bokeh is perfect. Since I most often shoot wide open with fast glass, the rendition of out of focus areas is very important to the look and feel of my images, and far more important than the ultimate resolution or contrast that sharpness freaks never tire of measuring (usually badly) and comparing. I think the problem some have with the term bokeh, is that it refers to a quality and not a quantity. I'm not surprised that the Japanese term is the most widely known and used. The attached images were all made with my Minolta 58mm f1.2, wide open.

Jay

 

[John Robertson]

Anything is better than Bokeh....... it sounds far too like a word in my local East of Scotland dialect which means to throw up or vomit!!!!!!!!

 

[GeroV]

I vote for Love Seat

Lovely
Outta
Vocus
Eemage

Showing
Entrancing
Artistic
Tones

 

[clintock]

http://www.vanwalree.com/optics/bokeh.html

shouldn't it be spelled bo-ke and in italics? or better in the original kanji symbols?
ぼけ

 

[peterm1]

Maybe it should be renamed LOOFA (light out of focus areas). For those who do not know a Loofa is something you use to exfoliate your skin or scrub your back in the shower or bath. Now if only I could think of a witty reason why LOOFA is a better name....

Lets start a contest. Why LOOFA?

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Many people can't tell the difference between "it's" and "its", "their" and "they're". Should we really be throwing the bokeh wrench in there?

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Shutterflower -- the market is great for Hasselblads these days, have you considered a 110/2 planar for the 200 series cameras? I got a 203FE and 110/2 lens for less than the cost of a new leica lens...had I bought it new 5 years ago it would have cost around 10,000.

I was offered one for $900; I think my heart corrected a beat or two.

I am conflicted, though, on the dependency on a battery by the 200 series. Main reason why I haven't taken the plunge on the Mamiya 645 Pro.

I did find a Mamiya Sekor C 80mm f/1.9, for relative peanuts. I didn't buy it; it's on hold. I haven't seen seen enough samples taken with this lens wide open.

 

[IGMeanwell]

Maybe it should be renamed LOOFA (light out of focus areas). For those who do not know a Loofa is something you use to exfoliate your skin or scrub your back in the shower or bath. Now if only I could think of a witty reason why LOOFA is a better name....

Lets start a contest. Why LOOFA?

LOOFA .... not bad

but .... your going to get a ton of confusion as to whether your talking lenses or showering techniques