bokeh backlash?

[flip]

I agree that it's generally uninteresting if it's the point of the picture, but I have seen some shots on this site which use lenses for 'painterly' effect. I like it. It's like a special brush for an artist that gets a certain job done. It just depends on whether the photographer is interested in showing what's actually there or in manipulating reality into something different. Would I pay $1000 for a 0.95 just to get tunnel vision? Likely not. But if the price was right, it would be an fun tool.

Really, though - aren't most of these bokeh lenses that way as a by-product of their speed? Now, that's something I'll pay for. [...in spite of the nausea I'll have on the way to bank today.]

 

[bmattock]

Really, though - aren't most of these bokeh lenses that way as a by-product of their speed?

Not necessarily. Consider vanilla, the kind you put in cake batter. There is good vanilla and bad vanilla and OK vanilla, but you can also have MORE vanilla or LESS vanilla.

So a faster lens used wide-open necessarily produces a shallower depth-of-focus and the out-of-focus areas are more pronounced, but that's just MORE vanilla, not necessarily BETTER vanilla.

Many lenses produce what we Westerners refer to as 'good' bokeh when they are used wide-open, but most lenses do not have aperture leaves protruding into the light path when they are wide-open. When stopped down, the aperture leaves of course do block part of the light, and it is the bokeh created by these that some find objectionable or pleasing, as the case may be.

I do not claim to know the truth here, but many say that lenses which produce a more perfect 'circle' shape at a given aperture, usually by virtue of having more aperture leaves, produces more pleasing bokeh.

Additional aperture leaves are a sign of quality in lens manufacture. Lenses of this quality are generally a) old or b) expensive or c) both. Nowadays, it is not uncommon for a prime lens to have only five leaves. I have older primes that have eleventy-dozen. I know because I've had them free themselves on my workbench, and I had to count them. One, five, several, many, eleventy-dozen.

However, it is not just speed and not just aperture leaves that produce bokeh, but also the lens itself. Some in this thread have stated that it is a function of lens aberration correction, but I think that is oversimplifying matters. It is known that different lens formulae produce different effects, and not just in matters of aberration; or rather, not ONLY in the matters of aberration we commonly think of. Coma, sperical aberration, astigmatism, color correction (lateral and axial), and of course barrel and pincushion distortion; all of these combine to give a lens a certain 'character,' some of which are prized and some reviled, and some more suited to some types of work than others.

So one might find the effects created by a Petzval design lens to be excellent for portraiture (many do), but the bokeh effect of that lens is quite different from a similar focal length of a similar exposure of a similar subject using a different lens (say a Tessar), even if the f-stop is the same and both are focused correctly.

Bokeh is, as I understand it, rendering of out-of-focus areas of a photograph that are pleasing to the eye in and of itself. This is accomplished in more ways than simply using the fastest lens possible wide-open. That is just MORE vanilla. I can't make my cake taste better by simply adding MORE vanilla in most cases.

I suspect that some folks who are turned off by what they think of as examples of good bokeh have simply been given too much vanilla, not the right amount of good vanilla.

 

[splitimageview]

We do it all the time with our own eyes when we focus on one element of a particular scene. Why shouldn't we do the same thing with our photographs?

Exactly what was what I was going to post earlier. It is how I see...in 3D. Therefore I like photographs that 'see' the same way such as this and this.

A non-photographer who views this image (from Avotius as posted in the bokeh thread) will be drawn straight into the subject. They won't necessarily be cognizant of the background or the technical reasons that enabled the photograph...it just works...it provokes an emotional connection with the viewer.

This may be interesting and pleasing artistically to some, but it's not how I see, it's how the camera sees. I still like it, tho.

 

[back alley]

isn't there a difference between selective focus and focussing on the background of an image?

 

[mgd711]

If bokeh is one of the first things you notice, the chances are that either it's not a good picture, or you are pointlessly obsessed with it.

Agreed........

 

[bmattock]

isn't there a difference between selective focus and focussing on the background of an image?

I think you're referring to selective focus and hyperfocal distance focusing, and yes, they're quite different.

Hyperfocal distance focus is when you want the distance between X and infinity to be 'acceptably sharp' and you choose an f-stop that will give you that. You have to know the distance to X, and your lens focal length and media size (35mm, 6x6cm, etc). DoF tables will give you hyperfocal distance f-stop to use if you provide them with the distance to X, focal length, and media size.

Selective focus is also involved with DoF, but in general, it means that you are intentionally manipulating the depth of field of a particular aperture (again, knowing distance to X, your media size, and focal length) to place X in the zone of sharp focus, with the focus dropping off both in front of and behind the subject (X).

If your DoF for a given aperture is 10 inches, for example, you can place the tip of the subject's nose right at the beginning of that ten inches and know that their entire visage will be in good focus. If you use shallower DoF, you may have only the selected focus point in sharp focus and lose sharpness on the rest of the face. Nothing saying what's best - only that you have the control if you want it.

If you have nothing in the immediate background of your subject, you can choose a deeper DoF, knowing that your background will still be out-of-focus, but perhaps less of a muddled blur, by choosing a smaller aperture.

Selective focus is, for me, one of the elements of creative control that I feel most photographers ignore, or fail to understand completely, and it is one of the elements that I feel most could use some understanding of.

 

[tbarker13]

isn't there a difference between selective focus and focussing on the background of an image?

Sure. The first is an element of a photograph. The other is an individual's own decision on what to look at when viewing the photograph.

I do think we sometimes get caught up in things like bokeh and absolute sharpness and sometimes forget about the picture itself. There is no one way to create a great image.

 

[venchka]

Good Vanilla

Good Vanilla

Spend some time in the world of Jim Galli. I think Jim uses the correct amount of extremely good vanilla.

Jim Galli Photographs

 

[tbarker13]

Exactly what was what I was going to post earlier. It is how I see...in 3D. Therefore I like photographs that 'see' the same way such as this and this.

A non-photographer who views this image (from Avotius as posted in the bokeh thread) will be drawn straight into the subject. They won't necessarily be cognizant of the background or the technical reasons that enabled the photograph...it just works...it provokes an emotional connection with the viewer.

This may be interesting and pleasing artistically to some, but it's not how I see, it's how the camera sees. I still like it, tho.

Both of those photos are great examples of this. That shot of the grass, in particular, would never work without being able to isolate the individual blades. (I know that's probably not technically grass, but I'm foliage challenged)

 

[bmattock]

Spend some time in the world of Jim Galli. I think Jim uses the correct amount of extremely good vanilla.

Jim Galli Photographs

I've been a fan of his for a long time. He is the reason I have a small collection of Petzval-design magic lantern lenses that I occasionally try to fit onto a 35mm or 120 camera.

 

[splitimageview]

Yes, in years past it was all about resolving power. Lenses such as the Canon 50/0.95 or 1.2 were trashed at the time. Yet today, they are cult lenses...I guess that makes bokeh real!

 

[notturtle]

Bokeh has its place. Nasty bokeh can be distracting but I think some use 'amazing bokeh' as a crutch for unimaginative photography. We all know what I am referring to here... endless of coffee cups with the newspaper etc.

Bokeh does not make a photo. It can gently assist in creating an ambience, but the shot has to be there first for the bokeh to contribute to something. I think for some bokeh itself has become a reason to shoot and I find that pretty lame. Sometimes vaguely pleasant shots results, but 99.99999% are just typical pointless bokeh shots that seem to endlessly please certain people. I find it fascinating that some of the people that rant about the importance of great bokeh in their lenses are incapable of producing a photograph that can hold the attention for more than a nanosecond. You could argue the same about some that fixate over microcontrast or some other trait.

Bokeh has become another dimension to the magic bullet, or the 'I have something extra special to my lens arsenal'. For those shooting only portraits at wider apertures, it matters, but usually more for people shooting the same shots in the same way each an every time (so the same creamy bokeh in the same aperture range with the same lens at the same distance) becomes important to replicate.

Hmm, so it matters, but it matters less the more you are interested in.

 

[bmattock]

I always find it interesting that people get their panties in such a twist over what others find "endlessly fascinating" as if it could not possibly be fascinating unless the person speaking finds it so. I personally find 'reality tv' insipid, but since it is so popular, I can hardly argue that others dast not therefore like it. People like what they like, even over the objections of the enlightened.

 

[back alley]

but it matters less the more you are interested in...

kinda zen...ish

 

[maddoc]

The best subsumption, where "boke" has its origin in photography is maybe this one:


These series dealt directly with the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the impact of the A-bombs rippled through practically all of the photography of the time, from Eikoh Hosoe’s collaborations with Tatsumi Hijikata in Man and Woman and Kamaitachi, to the are, bure, boke (rough, blurred and out-of-focus) aesthetic of Provoke in the late 1960s and early 1970s. [from http://www.eyecurious.com/hiroshima-6-august-1945/]

 

[amateriat]

How about this: bokeh ("bouquet") doesn't carry much weight if the lenses you currently possess aren't particularly great in terms of wide-open performance, but does carry quite a bit of weight if they do.

I regard bokeh as simply one metric of technical refinement in a lens, nothing more or less. A good lens, more often than not, has good bokeh when opened up. In my SLR days, my AF Minolta glass had bokeh galore, and I loved it (especially my 28-70 f/2,8 G: for that kind of money, it had better have had at least decent bokeh wide-open). All three of my M-Hex lenses for my Hexar RFs have great bokeh, as does my Contax Tvs compact.

Yes, bokeh, like certain other photo-tech metrics, gets fetishized. That doesn't mean the qualities involved are worthless.


- Barrett

 

[AgentX]

Is the seemingly new-to-me interest in "bokeh" part of/counter to the rise of digital cameras, which generally use shorter focal lengths and incur inevitably deep depth-of-field?

 

[Paul T.]

Whatever. If you really think "a photograph is a photograph is a photograph", then you have no ability to appreciate any form of visual art. It amazes me how bigoted, narrow minded, ignorant, and visually illiterate that a lot of photographs are. No wonder photography wasn't regarded as art for the first 100 yrs of its existence.

I agree with you.

But. And there is a big but. It's that we all know on boards like this posters, me included, obsess about details that are, on their own, irrelevant.

I would say that good composition is more important than bokeh. But it's much harder to define a good composition.

It's a bit like obsessing about guitar pickups - and people do. THey spend their lifetime tinkering with them because they think it will help them obtain a perfect sound. And changing the pickup does make an instantaneous difference. Only after a while does one realise that it's the shape of the guitar, how the neck is fixed, the wood, has a much bigger effect - and that the pickup is only a detail.

And as a for instance, I'd say your pic with the lousy bokeh from the 50/1.8 is better than hundreds if not thousands of photos on here that are posted as an example of good bokeh.

 

[leicashot]

Bokeh is important but should not dictate how a photographer uses it or used as a prime importance when shoosing a lens...but then again, if that's what's most important to people, so be it. It really doesn't affect my life. Whatever brings a smile to our face....which is what photography is all about.

 

[notturtle]

I always find it interesting that people get their panties in such a twist over what others find "endlessly fascinating" as if it could not possibly be fascinating unless the person speaking finds it so. I personally find 'reality tv' insipid, but since it is so popular, I can hardly argue that others dast not therefore like it. People like what they like, even over the objections of the enlightened.

No nickers in a twist here, but your comment sounds like an argument for the lowest common denominator to me - fish'n chips wins, close all the restaurants!

It should be self evident that I realise others DO find shots of coffee cups beside a newspaper at f 0.1 fascinating, but I am suggesting that horizons can be broader and ultimately even more rewarding. Often people progress themselves, unless stuck in a goldfish bowl in which the procession of coffee cup shots is endless.

Your comment is very anti-critique, in which case there is no real scope for opinion based feedback, self-critique and self-furtherance...because there is no, well, further. Where you are at is as good as anywhere else, so why bother?