bokeh as a deciding factor

[Doug]

if it were up to me i would ban the word bokeh from all photo forums and ban any discussions about the topic.

but it doesn't seem to be going away any time soon...

i do have a curiosity though...how many people would either buy or not a buy a lens based on bokeh?

Joe, considering your first sentence, it's ironic that you bring it up in a new thread. 😀

Your second sentence is right on... Some people pay attention to bokeh and some don't.

Answer to your question: For me it's a factor. But it seems the most intrusive bokeh occurs with a fast lens wide open. But I am reluctant to shoot wide open because I've long been aware that lenses are just not at their best there. Close down only a stop and see improvements in contrast, sharpness, and -yeah- bokeh too.

So the Bokeh would have to be pretty ugly and affect the next stop down too to discourage me from a lens purchase.

 

[gavinlg]

Bokeh is one of my major considerations. It's an element of the look of the lens, and in my case and important one, so i judge accordingly.

 

[Luis]

I have read a fair amount of photographic criticism, by well-known critics, and have never seen a single mention of the subject of 'bokeh', which I only discovered in forums such as RFF. I have never read a critic say, for example, 'this picture stinks, but the out-of-focus areas are sublime,' or, 'I wonder what wonderful lens produced this excellent bokeh' (since, apparently, it's the lens that produces the bokeh, not the photographer). IMO, it is the whole image that one considers when judging a photograph, rather than certain areas, in- or out-of-focus. I remember, I think it was in RFF, someone complaining about the poor bokeh of some lens or other. This was because there were in the background of a protrait the photographer had taken some sharp points of light, which presumably he would have liked his lens to eliminate or at least blur artistically. To avoid this kind of problem, of course, when one takes a picture one has to be careful to exclude any elements that detract from the picture. This is easier said than done, and my wife will never forgive me for a portrait I took of her in Paris with a fat lady in red, of all colors, in the background. I did not see the red lady, and my lens must have had very bad bokeh, because said lady is visible in the picture, even if out of focus. Then again, I have a book by Dennis Stock, 'Flower Show', where he purposely used the out-of-focus areas, using a 500mm mirror lens with its very particular characteristics, to produce wonderful flower pictures with strong abstract elements. And you can be sure that Stock did not expect the lens to take the pictures for him.

 

[gavinlg]

It isn't about lenses taking pictures for you. If you go about the attitude of "bokeh isn't real", "critics don't mention bokeh when critiquing prints" blah blah blah, why don't you just go and buy an olympus stylus epic and use it. Sell all your leica/zeiss/nikon gear and use the most basic point and shoot with some sort of manual capability.

In judging lenses, I look at overall feel of the image produced by the lens in certain situations. Some lenses have a feel I really don't like, and some give images a feel I do like. For instance - I do not like swirly bokeh in general - it's very distracting to me. So some of the old school screw mount lenses aren't for me, because with even slightly busy backgrounds they can render it swirly. A Zeiss ZM sonnar however gives the most beautifully classic look - subtly rendered but still sharp, and the transition from in focus to out of focus isn't abrupt like most modern lenses (look at the canon 50 1.4 EF - transfers to out of focus very abruptly). In the sonnar, the bokeh is beautifully smooth but still has character unlike say the canon 85 1.2L which is too smooth and doesn't have enough character IMO.

The point is, by choosing a lens that pleases me with its look, I can then go and take pictures knowing that when I nail something, It's going to be pleasing to me rather than subpar.


Critics never judge lens characteristics, but in most professional cases, having a lens with good characteristics will be preferable to a lens with poor characteristics like sever coma or swirly bokeh.

Bokeh is a term used to describe the to of focus rendering of a lens. It's a real term, all lenses render this differently, and there are fairly distinct criteria for good and bad bokeh, although it is subject to opinion. Get over it.

 

[gavinlg]

Another thing - if you're so weirded out by the whole thing with bokeh, what about lens sharpness? Heaps of superb photos have been made with too low shutter speeds to be sharp, or crap quality film/processing. In fact, why bother with good film? Heaps of superb photos have been made on chinese film... In fact, why bother about driving in your car to go to your photo destination? I'm sure heaps of superb photos have been made by people riding a donkey to their photo destination... In fact... Why not gouge your eyes out? You don't need to see to make photos - I know for a fact that lots of excellent photos have been made by blind photographers...


See where this is going?

 

[infrequent]

have to agree with fdigital. i thought that one of the major factors with RFs was the superior / fast optics. and the reason they are superior is because of their performance wide-open and available light usability. to say then that bokeh doesn't matter is a tad ridiculous. why not then use a digi p&s and be content with dof from your nose to infinity?

 

[infrequent]

well i am not sure if shooting wide open is just a modern fad but i do appreciate that lovelly oof makes a marginal photo stand out. sure they are folks who push bokeh a bit too far where everything a is hexagonal blur (and it really defeats the purpose). heck, i have been guilty of the same and went a bit nuts with my nikkor 50/1.8 when i first bought it. but i certainly have received positive responses for lovely bokeh. mind you they were strong shots already but bokeh adds that bit of magic.

 

[gavinlg]

The whole concept of bokeh isn't so much the idea of constantly taking pictures that have a foreground and an out of focus background, it's having a name for the how the out of focus bits correlates with the rest of the picture. To understand lenses you have to understand the elements of their rendering, which are all interconnected. The look and visual feel of bokeh is influences and is influenced by the sharpness, how corrected the lens is for aberrations, contrast and micro-contrast etc etc. It's all a compromise of lens design - and thats just what it is - a compromise. They can make the bokeh beautifully dreamy but they have to go easy on the contrast and sharpness... they can make the lens super super sharp but usually the bokeh suffers by being harsher.

This is why their are so many different lens designs. Sonnar, Tessar, Gaussian, Flektogon, Planar, etc etc. Each one is better in one area than most of the other areas.

Theres nothing of a new fad there. Bokeh was there from the first lenses ever made - the japanese just named it. Long before they named it, optical engineers were taking it into consideration when designing optics.

 

[FrankS]

You'd be a very difficult student for me to have in my class Fred, with your mind set that if you don't understand something, it is unimportant or doesn't exist.

 

[BillP]

Right.

We keep talking here about bokeh as if it is a recent invention (or should that be discovery?)

Humour me for a moment while I share with you a passage from a book by Dan Cruikshank. "Around the World in 80 Treasures". It is a tie-in with the BBC tv series of the same name.

He is writing here about the Rioanji garden in Kyoto. Created in 1520, the garden is a tool for meditation and enlightenment. "The temple is part of the Rinzai school of Zen Bhuddism - the school that believes enlightenment need not come gradually, after years of steady work, but can be the product of intuition, can come suddenly and dramatically, in a flash of awareness called satori."

He goes on to write:

"Then I appreciate the space in between the stones - the negative space becomes more dominant than the positive, the groups of stones subservient to the spaces they define. I remember having this feeling in Durham Cathedral. After looking at its stones for days - the forms they take, the carvings and patterns on them - I suddenly saw the space the stone walls and vaults enclose. In a cathedral it's this space that's important, at least as important, as the fabric that defines the space. It's the 'unseen' world that the Bible says is more important than the seen."

The concept of space being as important as - or more important than - the motif itself is nothing new, and is not unique to photography. The space in which a sculpture is installed is often as much a part of the artist's vision as the piece itself. Together they form the finished work - the motif in context.

Regards,

Bill

 

[ZebGoesZeiss]

For those of you who doesn't "see" or "believe" in the concept of Bokeh, count yourselves lucky - one less thing to worry about. To me Bokeh can ruin an otherwise decent shot. "Out of focus areas" should be just that: Out of focus. Some lenses I've tried and owned makes me dizzy with all the swirly stuff going on in the OOF areas - this distracts me from looking at what is actually "in focus".

 

[ferider]

Fred, humour me for a moment: show me a well-published photo of any genre with bad bokeh, or whatever you call ugly background. I couldn't come up with one when I tried.

 

[ferider]

Hi Fred,

sorry, I came across wrong. Someone else above said, that nobody ever commented on bad bokeh in a good photo. Photos are just looked at
for what they are. Then there was the discussion about paint brushes, etc.

So I was trying to come up with a recognized well-known photo with what I consider "bad bokeh". I couldn't.

It might be one of those terms that is heavily discussed in internet hobbyist forums, less by artists, but artists care for it nevertheless ?

Why did HCB & Capa use Sonnars and Summicrons ? They did have alternatives, right ?

General question not only adressed at you. But I'm sure you have an opinion 😉

Roland.

 

[back alley]

For those of you who doesn't "see" or "believe" in the concept of Bokeh, count yourselves lucky - one less thing to worry about.

works for me...

 

[Nando]

I understand that the use of Bokeh, as a term, is very recent. The origin according to wikipedia:

Mike Johnston, former editor of Photo Techniques magazine, claims to have coined the bokeh spelling to suggest the correct pronunciation to English speakers,[2] replacing the previous spelling boke that derived directly from the Japanese word for "fuzzy" and had been in use at least since 1996.[3]

The term bokeh has appeared in photography books at least since 2000.[4]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh

 

[tripod]

Bokeh has existed since optics were invented. It is a characteristic of an optical system, like resolution, contrast, and various types of aberrations. (Bokeh may indeed be caused by the sum total of aberrations in a particular lens design.) Film can record it. There is no objectively good or bad bokeh. There is just different and distinctive renditions of bokeh. It is subjective because what is pleasing to one may not be to another viewer. There are generally held opinions however, such as the OOF rendering of mirror lenses which is generally disliked, but then there are some who do like it and try to exploit the effect to their satisfaction. The term bokeh originated among Japanese photographers, simply as the Japanese way of saying "how a lens renders out of focus areas."

I'm hoping that Fred's university course is about painting or photographic aesthetics, and not about technical photographic concepts, which don't seem to be his area of strength.

 

[BillP]

Totally OT, but whenever anyone says Bokeh, it brings to mind my Grandfather (who died back in the early 1970s) saying "bash him on the boko" (which I think was a line from a song) if anyone annoyed or upset him or his.

I never really understood it at the time, and it is only since the advent of the interweb that I have learned that it was a slang term for nose, originated in the late 19th Century. It was therefore a term that dates back to when he was a child.

Totally random, but I just wanted to share.

Regards,

Bill

 

[aizan]

testing bokeh outdoors with backlit trees makes no sense to me. indoors, that's the real test.

 

[tripod]

Fred, this is getting humorous, the way you keep trying to block out the possibility of the significance of bokeh despite the fact that many people have addressed it here on this thread. It's like your approach to the DOF discussion a while back: "No one here on RFF understands DOF nor is qualified to talk about it."

Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean that others don't. That would be incredibly egotistic. I freely acknowledge that there are multitudinous people that have more knowledge and understanding in certain areas than I have. Can't you see that possibility in your case?

I just shrug my shoulders and think, some students just aren't developmentally ready for some lessons.

 

[sevres_babylone]

My feeling remains, the RF is not the best tool for this kind of work, it is simply not giving the photographer enough feedback - so adjustments can be made while working.

Feedback, if it's a digital RF though.