Bokeh: Do you like it or loathe it?

[Kate-the-Great]

Define properly! .... And who decides whether a particular use of bokeh is proper .... the bokeh police?

Suggesting that there is a correct and incorrect way of using bokeh is ridiculous .... it's a choice to be made by the individual just like shutter speed, aperture or ISO.

I agree that shallow DOF and character of bokeh is a choice- but shutter speed and ISO are objective settings in that there are "correct" values that must be set.

As you say, there is no correct and incorrect way of using bokeh / shallow depth of field, so I would say in that sense it is more similar to composition and post-processing in that it's a subjective choice.

I am 100% in agreement with your sentiment, just discussing semantics because I find discourse of artistic technique interesting 🙂

 

[jsrockit]

I can't be concerned with debating it... it either works for a photo or it doesn't. It's always been there and always will be as long as we use lenses for photography. However, I can't get into photos where the only subject is bokeh though.

 

[shadowfox]

I love bokeh.
If it helps the subject stand out from the background.
Or, if it helps to create a sense of distance and depth within the scene.

To me, it's harder to create a compelling photograph when everything is in focus.

 

[Harry Caul]

I guess being an old guy influences the way I see the whole "bokeh" thing. Back in the day, we didn't talk about bokeh. We used fast lenses and put up with out of focus backgrounds because ASA 400 film was super high speed for us. Shooting with available light (which was a "look" back then) in anything but good daylight resulted in "bokeh."

Up until fairly recently large sensor cameras were not affordable to casual consumers, so bokeh signified commercial photography or the cinematic. Now that it's new norm to treat social media as a personal PR outlet and how the internet more than anything is now a personal marketing tool, it makes sense that consumer photographers will try and adopt some of the visual language of advertorial photography and cinema, even if it is just to take pictures of their lunch. The backlash (if there is any) is probably more against the hubris turn kitsch that constant shallow DOF represents than a reaction against actual technique. In other words maybe the backlash against the faux pas of bokeh is even more trendy than the bokeh obsession in the first place.

For me it's kind of a combination of these two posts.... In the past, having to manage shallow depth of field was always just a given in photography. The further back you go the more compromises you had to make (slow aperture lenses and film on 8x10 cameras!). As film sizes shrank, ISOs improved and lenses got faster it started offering much more flexibility in composition and spontaneity -- but you still had to be cognizant of DOF. Treating it artfully just meant you were a good photographer dealing with the technical limitations of the medium. With the advent of APS and then digital, film/sensor sizes shrunk still further, especially for consumer level cameras... Eventually we got to the point where you COULDN'T have shallow DOF even if you wanted it.

I feel like the resurgence of purposefully shooting shallow DOF was kind of a collective response to people realizing their photographs no longer looked like photographs from days gone by... Like most of you I'm sure, I field many requests from family/friends inquiring about moving up from an iPhone to a dedicated camera. I ask them to rank their priorities and more often than not these are the top two requests:

1) When I push the shutter I want it to take the picture (i.e. speed/responsiveness)
2) I want professional looking pictures (i.e. shallow DOF).

 

[sevo]

By definition, bokeh is NOT shallow DOF, but the rendering of out-of-focus areas! Surprisingly few of the contributors to this thread seem to have any opinion on the latter...

 

[mfunnell]

OK, so let's get down to cases (some old photos):

#1

#2

#3

In #1 I quite deliberately wanted selective focus to isolate the subject. The quality of the OOF background is, to my mind, somewhat nervous and I might, in the grand scheme of things, have preferred a different rendering. But my Elmar-M 50mm/f2.8 just plain wouldn't fit on my Contax G2...

In #2 I wanted some 3D-ish effect, produced with a degree of subject isolation, but wanted less foreground to background separation. I actually like the way the background is rendered here, but without anything standing out as being hugely out of focus...

In #3 I wanted things to look mostly sharp foreground through background.

Were my choices wrong in any of these? Perhaps. Different folks have different tastes. But only in #1 and #2 is there any point in even discussing "bokeh". And both can be discussed equally. Discussions of how out of focus the background is are not about bokeh, while discussions of the quality of the out-of-focus areas are.

Technical details

#1) Contax G2 w 45mm/f2 Planar @f2
#2) Leica M3 w Elmar-M 50mm/f2.8 @ f4
#3) Canon 30D w 17-55mm/f2.8 @ 17mm/f9

...Mike

 

[BLKRCAT]

Bokeh?

 

[mfunnell]

Bokeh?

OK, so we're talking about things such as point light-sources tending more elliptical than circular, the colour-shift in the rim around those point light-sources, the fact there is a rim - that kind of thing? Or are we just talking about how much of the photo is out of focus, and how out of focus those OOF areas are? Different things...

...Mike

 

[Monochrom]

Expensive remnant

Expensive remnant

Hi, very interesting question.

Bokeh is a remnant of lens characteristics and it´s been a trend in these years. DEcadent pictures of lux´s shooting hydrants at night with comments like "breathtaking" have been a trend in many places.
Bkeh has been upgraded mechanically to a type of punctum that as it´s nature has nothing but blurrness.

I´d say bokeh is not only a waste of money and field it´s also a naive and lazy reason to make photographs interesting. Naive cos many give for granted that this blur will make a picture meaningful and lazy because the lens gets the whole responsibility of this pretended interest...using barthes concepts i´d say bokeh puts studium and punctum into retreat. Operator exists no more, Spectator knows nothing.

As i said before being a remnant of the lens output it should be kept that way, the divisory line may be fuzzy but is there and everyone must work hard intelectually to determine how to use it. Expensive remnants can´t be put in a pedestal and can´t lead the play.

After all photography is a demanding activity no matter if you are a pro or amateur.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Is where really such crap as anti-bokeh?
What those bunch of guffs do?
Taking it at 28mm and wider with f16?
It is like anti DOF and anti aperture.

 

[mfunnell]

Is where really such crap as anti-bokeh?
What those bunch of guffs do?
Taking it at 28mm and wider with f16?
It is like anti DOF and anti aperture.

Well, f64 was a thing...

...Mike

 

[Dwig]

Honestly, I don't understand the question. If "bokeh" is, to pick one definition, ...then I don't understand how you can be either for or against "bokeh" per se.
...Mike

I agree totally.

The OP's questionaire implies a lack of understanding as the the real original definition of "bokeh", which is unfortunately becoming more and more common in posts. The term is mutating into being a trendy nose-in-the-air replacement for longer phrases that require effort to type into a post (e.g. "shallow depth of field", ...).

I wish newbies would stop using "bokeh" except when discussing the guality of the blur. It should be used to refer to the quantity of blur.

 

[BLKRCAT]

Well, f64 was a thing...

...Mike

Ive never seen F64 so I'm going to assume thats a LF thing or rare MF thing. Ive seen F32 on MF.

How much diffraction would you be getting at F64? Sounds like it could be a useless aperture anyways.

 

[jsrockit]

Ive never seen F64 so I'm going to assume thats a LF thing or rare MF thing. Ive seen F32 on MF.

How much diffraction would you be getting at F64? Sounds like it could be a useless aperture anyways.

History Lesson:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_f/64

 

[NickTrop]

"anti-bokeh" LOL. I'm anti-potato.

 

[Harry Caul]

I agree totally.

The OP's questionaire implies a lack of understanding as the the real original definition of "bokeh", which is unfortunately becoming more and more common in posts. The term is mutating into being a trendy nose-in-the-air replacement for longer phrases that require effort to type into a post (e.g. "shallow depth of field", ...).

I wish newbies would stop using "bokeh" except when discussing the guality of the blur. It should be used to refer to the quantity of blur.

Agreed. My response was about the trend towards shallow DOF as that is what I think the OP was really trying to ask...

 

[rbsinto]

I use depth of field as a creative device usually to emphasize or isolate subject matter and "drive" the viewer's eyes to where I want them to go in a photo.
I don't think I've ever spent even one pico-second worrying about the quality of the out of focus areas in any of my pictures that have them, and frankly never understood the preoccupation that many photographers have with this Bokeh business.

 

[Pioneer]

I like the OOF rendering from some of my lenses, and I don't particularly care for it from some of my other lenses.

Not real sure how I vote to properly isolate that preference? 😀

 

[f16sunshine]

Agreed. My response was about the trend towards shallow DOF as that is what I think the OP was really trying to ask...

By definition, bokeh is NOT shallow DOF, but the rendering of out-of-focus areas! Surprisingly few of the contributors to this thread seem to have any opinion on the latter...

Although that is true, like with other things that emerge from obscurity into popular use,.... the more general use of the word bokeh now refers to out of focus blur.
Less often it refers to the quality or character of the oof character of a lens.

The word has been stolen away in a way.

For it's "new" meaning this discussion seems pretty much on course.

The opinion on it's original meaning could only aply to one lens or another.
Since the OP did not mention a lens we can only assume he was not refering to one but rather, use of shallow dof in images.

 

[codester80]

I think the focus is on the wrong thing. In the blurred background of the OP's question is the real question: what are all those people going to do now that boring pictures of isolated objects against a blurred background are uncool? There is an entire generation of photographers with bags full of 1.1, 1.2, and 1.4 lenses that will now have to be CLA'd so the aperture rotates after being stuck at maximum. Soon these photographers will realize a lens at 5.6 or 8, no matter the price, produces some wonderfully sharp images. They will have an existential crisis over why they possess a bag full over overpriced glass and wonder what might have been if they had spent their money on something else. Instead of hunting for the elusive buttery smooth "bokeh" these photographers will seek the aesthetics of the f/64 group alluded to in an earlier post. Tripods and lenses suffering the least from diffraction at minimum apertures will be the rage. Photographers will suffer the agony of selecting a plane of focus to maximize depth of field in an image. Hyperfocal focusing and the techniques associated with it will be argued ad nauseam.
Personally, I would like see everyone get on the slow sync flash bandwagon. There is nothing like taking a boring object and adding the illusion of motion to it through softly blurred edges. Any scene can be turned into a glowing neon universe.
Meanwhile the rest of us will continue to use all the techniques of photography, picking what works best for a particular situation or image based on years of experience and actual knowledge of photography.