bokeh backlash?

[Leighgion]

I think being so easily distracted that a few quivery lines in the out of focus areas gets you is a form of disability.

 

[sevo]

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.

Not really. There are side issues involved in creating good bokeh - for example, optically flawless lenses would have poor bokeh, you cannot have good bokeh to both sides of the focal plane at once (hence good bokeh lenses are so either front or back only, except for the odd few Nikon and Minolta portrait lenses with switchable bokeh directivity), and it is contradictory to the "sharp" signature Leica/Nikon/Canon press primes of the sixties and seventies (where the edge sharpening caused by OOF donut rendering was actively used).

Don't get me wrong, I love the Tessars and Heliars on my old cameras - but they certainly weren't the final apex of optical design, and lenses can be biased to employ their flaws for a variety of other desirable effects as well.

Sevo

 

[sevo]

The thing is, most of the photos that us mortals take are actually rather mundane. In out time they have little to no social/historical relevance. In this setting, all the technicalities matter - since it pretty much is how we seperate a good/significant photo from a bad/insignificant one.

Not quite. Or rather, on the contrary. Regardless of their quite likely current insignificance, our vernacular photographs do develop social and historical relevance with aging. Even the worst failures can eventually reveal how we constructed our reality to some future generation. Possibly not in any flattering way - but even if it only tells that we were a generation with excess money to spend on pursuing big dreams with a small talent, that is a message of interest...

 

[sjb79]

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=72171&d=1249767026
I think this is the best example of bokeh used in this thread. The background is a long way behind the subject and the eye can still understand the OOF areas. Its a very natural image, how the eye would see it without a camera/ lens.

I find bokeh less appealing when used without any context, ie, foreground subject is pin sharp and the background is just a sea of OOF. It doesn't matter which lens you have, how its coated or how many aperture blades it has, if you shoot wide open and close to the subject you're gonna get bokeh. Using it subtly and at the right time for the right image is the skill, not just because you can.

Just my tuppence worth...

 

[Roger Hicks]

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.

. . .

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.

Very true. In the Bokeh bit for my site (currently being revised) I referred to the tail wagging the dog. I'm not planning on changing that bit...

Cheers,

R.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

I would have checked "I rebuild my lenses to change their optical characteristics for out-of-focus rendition", but it was not listed.

How about a new poll?

Hybrid J-3, wide-open at F1.5. 1958 module with 1974 front element. Softer focus, smoother background.

And another.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/oldcamerapictures/3221979230/

 

[Sonnar Brian]

I'll never understand why people get so hung up over Bokeh. It's subjective. There are no "good" or "bad" bokeh lenses, and to criticize a lens us such can be insulting.

Bokeh, or "rendering of out of focus areas" as some prefer is a component of an overall image. "Good/Bad" bokeh? Did it make an image better or worse in context of that image? The answer is in the eye of the beholder. No right or wrong answer can be assigned universally. Otherwise, a painting could be universally hailed as good or bad, and everyone would agree and have the same piece of artwork in their living room.

As integral to a lens as focal length and depth of field. Most people using cameras are happy to get the exposure correct, and F-stop+shutter-speed settings are a means to that end. Few people set F-stop to gain control over selective focus. Most that do, do not think about how a lens renders the circles of confusion.

Most lenses do not allow for changes in rendering the circles of confusion, an exception is the Nikkor "DC" (defocus control) lenses. Most photographers that are "into" bokeh will select lenses that give the look that they like. I suspect very few of them have taken the lenses apart and changed their rendering.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

Exactly. Bokeh happens. I just consider it an artifact of whatever aperture i had to set the lens at to get the photo I wanted. If I have to shoot someone at 10 feet with my 70-200 2.8 at 200 and 2.8, the background is going to be nothing but blur. Who cares what it looks like? I'm not shooting backgrounds. I can shoot stuff with the 70-200 2.8 IS that I can't shoot with anything else. What it does to OOF areas is simply irrelevant.

 

[bmattock]

Exactly. Bokeh happens. I just consider it an artifact of whatever aperture i had to set the lens at to get the photo I wanted. If I have to shoot someone at 10 feet with my 70-200 2.8 at 200 and 2.8, the background is going to be nothing but blur. Who cares what it looks like? I'm not shooting backgrounds. I can shoot stuff with the 70-200 2.8 IS that I can't shoot with anything else. What it does to OOF areas is simply irrelevant.

Not if it is distracting. The example I gave earlier was the donut-shaped bokeh produced by mirror lenses. Sometimes bokeh matters.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

Really, I understand what you are saying. But, if all you have is a 600mm mirror lens, and it takes it to get the photo, bokeh simply doesn't matter.

 

[bmattock]

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!

No, more like it doesn't make sense to argue that fish-n-chips places are not restaurants just because you don't personally like them, and railing against them on the basis of their unworthiness is not likely to make them go away. People like what they like, whether one approves of that or not.

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.

You apply your own standards of 'rewarding' to others and suggest that they ought to like what you like. They don't. They don't like what I like, either. It's a burden, but I'm getting used to it.

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?

My comment is based on what I perceive as the reality that most photographs are not competing for artistic awards. Speaking only for myself, I 'bother' because I don't really pay attention to what others are doing or what they like, I just do what I like to do.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Really, I understand what you are saying. But, if all you have is a 600mm mirror lens, and it takes it to get the photo, bokeh simply doesn't matter.

Except that 'getting the photo' can mean several different things. Two of the most obvious are 'a picture of a film star with her knickers off to sell to the gutter press' (bokeh irrelevant) or 'a pleasing picture' (bokeh quite possibly though far from invariably relevant).

Something U have come to realize more and more in the last 40+ years of photography is that there are times when, if you can't get the picture you want, it's better to admit it. As a general rule, of course it's better to try -- but at that point, it may also make sense not to show your failures to others, with the excuse 'I only had a 600mm mirror...'

Cheers,

R.

 

[Krosya]

Here is a pic I just saw in our gallery :
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=108707
I think it looks better this way, compared to having all the background sharp with details

 

[Sonnar Brian]

In the 70s, Mirror Lens Bokeh was all the rage. I'll have to put up some of my wild-life photo's with the Reflex-Nikkor 500/8.

I need to use the 600/8 Vivitar Series I Solid-Cat more. Now THAT is an amazing lens.

 

[JohnTF]

Seconded. In most good pictures it is at best very secondary, and it is often unnoticeable, which is as it should be. It's like the fashion designer who said that if a woman wore one of the dresses he had designed, and people said, "What a beautiful dress," he had failed, but if they said, "What a beautiful woman," he had succeeded.

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.

EDIT: Brilliant idea for a thread, by the way -- I wish I'd thought of it! -- and one of the few polls in which I take any interest whatsoever.

Cheers,

R.

Does Mike know you are one of the 4? ;-)

 

[JohnTF]

Well, everything matters, some more than others perhaps.

In the production of an image, if you are a painter, you have many tools/ techniques uniquely yours to use in a variety of manner, and you can choose what to include and ignore within a frame.

I envy this control, and I sometimes see something that is a great image, but it just cannot be captured photographically, regardless of equipment or skill.

So, in photography, you can do some things with a subject, but there are always limits--- physical, perceptual and technical, and you can certainly mess up even a good subject with poor choices. At times, it can be very difficult to find and pull out an image you want. Whether or not it is something good is, of course, subjective to a degree.

(the So was for Roger's benefit, ;-))

Perhaps we need a crappy image thread in which we (at least claim to) intentionally produce the worst image possible from a potentially good opportunity.

Sometimes an image serendipitously occurs, the planets align, and you find the moment. A lot of things may happen in your mind even without a lot of conscious effort and you react. Some people have more moments than others.

However, A bright area can distract, cropping can be poor, printing can be poor, the image can be too busy with uninteresting and distracting detail, you can blow the focus, a bird flies in front of your lens, your monitor can be not calibrated properly -- there are a lot of things that may be wrong, and not just on a completely subjective level.

One tool among many, is selective focus, and the corresponding appearance of the OOF part of the image. If it serves you well, and nicely isolates the subject as you desire, with a pleasing background, it is good, if it is ugly, then perhaps not.

As you use particular lenses, whether or not you understand the inner workings of those lenses, you may find that some produce images that align with what you are trying to produce, and bokeh is part of the equation, even if you cannot quantify it precisely in the lens construction.

I generally like to know how things work, but I also know the limits of my knowledge of lens craft are far from those of many others. I feel fortunate to simply find some glass I feel I can rely upon to make an image I want.

I also respect the opinions of folks who achieve and use that knowledge productively.

If you make enough images, hopefully you gravitate toward lenses that suit your purpose, and it would be a perfect world I suppose if everyone knew which lenses were so before they acquire them, perhaps a holy grail mark?

Brian, I nominate you to write the "Lens Book", and do all the leg work for me. ;-)

Until then, I generally like the images produced by some Leitz, Zeiss, and as of late, Cosina glass.

I suppose I could have cut this down to the last two sentences. ;-)

Regards, John

 

[ferider]

So, (for Roger )

Making bokeh a dominant part of a picture seems unfashionable to some.

However, making very wide angle pictures, 18mm and below, looking unnatural and mostly like lens tests, seems cool and widely accepted at RFF.

What's the difference ?

 

[Krosya]

I'm not sure what you mean by " is kind of like Holga photography, sure it is great, but currently just tough to be taken seriously.", but I think photos like here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eye_of_wally/tags/holgaholga/

are great and take them seriously, whatever that means...

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

where do you stand on bokeh?

necessary evil?

fool's quest?

i hate the f'ing word itself!!

bokeh smokeh...

You (general "you", not you you, Joe) can hate reality all you want, but reality it remains.

Bokeh isn't a "necessary evil", it just is. It's not like somebody decided to amend the laws of physics and optics and sneaked it in some subcommittee and made it happen.

A whole culture identified it, and somebody spread the word.


It's like hating the word "refraction" and hating your Physics professor for it. He had nothing to do with it except point it out.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Making bokeh a dominant part of a picture seems unfashionable to some.

I digress