Bokeh is dead - Long live SOFA!

Bokeh is dead - Long live SOFA!

  • Bokeh Forevah!

    Votes: 389 57.5%

  • SOFA, coz i'm a modern guy/gal

    Votes: 67 9.9%

  • Who cares, it's the in-focus area what matters! (Don't you dare to choose this option!)

    Votes: 221 32.6%
  • Total voters
    677
My overlapper doesn't provide any sofa.
And right now I'm having a gas attack for some mcnp. :p
 
this has been fun indeed :) x 1000 -
I will sit on my SOFA and enjoy a Coffee Table Bookeh on Photography !
cheers Ruben
 
mtokue said:
The word/term "Bokeh" is most often used as a derogatory/negative comment about a person who is forgetful/negligent. ( sort of like the "dumb blond" :eek: kind of saying)
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Aha! So true bokeh is only achieved when you leave on the lens cap while shooting !! :D

Gene
 
if good bokeh is more likely to be found on Leica glass perhaps the word shoul have a German sound to it - Zofa
 
And right now I'm having a gas attack for some mcnp.
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nonono! You cant use that word, its all proto-germanic, west-germanic and greek... doesn´t say anything about what a lasagne really is! :D

Interesting though, how people want to replace a word that they claim not to fully understand, against another which suddenly makes everything clear...
 
Boke means fuzziness or dizziness* talking about good dizziness is like talking about drugs or the feeling you have after a rollercoaster ride!

Even though the SOFA is LOL it does describe the term more precise it could be QOOFA - Quality OF OFF FOCUS AREAS - but Bokeh say's nothing exept for japaneese speaking people.

This year I was on a board that selected the years best danish book productions and I had to talk about bokeh to the rest of the board as several of the most imposant books llacked good bokeh - som were done with optics that made you seasick from looking at the off focus areas.

So what ever Bokeh should be called it should include "Quality" and "off/out of Focus"

* I have qoted some stuff below from
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/bokeh.htm

WHAT IS BOKEH ?

Bokeh describes the rendition of out-of-focus points of light.

It describes the appearance or "feel" of out-of-focus backgrounds and foregrounds.

Differing amounts of spherical aberration alter how lenses render out-of-focus points of light, and thus their bokeh. The word "bokeh" comes from the Japanese word "boke" (pronounced bo-keh) which literally means fuzziness or dizziness.

cheers Ruben
 
You do no like "bokeh"? Hah! Then try "chiaroscuro":

http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/c/chiaroscuro.html

Sorry, but I learn to LOVE bokeh. The term seems bad/hard/stupid when I first came across it. Even the concept did not mean much back then. But now, almost all my (artistic?) pictures have well chosen out of focus elements. Many times such out of focus areas occupy most of the frame. I agree with the comment before (Pherdinand), People never "comment" on bokeh, but it is included in what makes them like a picture.

Lately I do not use lenses with bad bokeh -OR- I use them under controlled situations (almost all lenses are capable of good bokeh for some combination of distance, lighting, aperture, subject).
 
My point is that the word bokeh already exists as a description of what we mean.
Thus, the problem doesn´t seem to me, to be so much about which words could describe what is meant better and replace it, but rather how is bokeh to be defined...
 
Rocamadour...your comment seems to say, there's this word 'bokeh' meaning something, let us find an exact physical reality that we can associate with it. I think it should be the other way around - we should point at those things we want a word for, and then look for the best word to describe it. But i might misinterpret what you've said.
 
dphotoguy said:
How about combining the two? BOSO, BOKFA, SOKEH, SOFEH, BOKEHSOFA? How about we call it the "softareasurroundingthefocusarea." How about BREAST? They're also soft and comfortable to look at. HAHA...just kidding.
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I would agree to using BOKEHSOFA, but only because it has the word "bokeh" in it, and I could be sure that using it would get people worked up.

I think I'm going to start using "bokeh" and "bokey", and perhaps "Pocky", to all mean the same thing when I have to write about anything related to the OOF areas in a photograph. That ought to keep people on their toes.
 
I really like the term bokeh, because it sounds nice, but mysterious. It has some incomprehensible connotation. It has the same mystical atraction as a nice bokeh :angel:
 
Pherdinand, from my point of view we have this word, bokeh, wich is used for explaining a phenomenon with vague defenition. The problem with "bokeh" is that it is not possible to hear from the word what it describes. Now, this is not an unusual problem for a word, but the lack of a good description for this one makes it more notecible. A discussion here of how to describe the phenomenon would therefore be a good thing in my opinion.
From that, it is possible to either continue to use "bokeh" (like we use a lot of loan words) or make a new word from the description, like for example SOFA.
Two things, in my mind, speaks for the continued use of the existing bokeh word:

First, a new word that would keep its description in it, would be very static. It wouldn´t be satisfactory unless it had a perfect defenition from birth, if it only came close to explaining what we wanted, there would always be a need for changing it as better descriptions came along. Furthermore it would be hard to change the definition if needed.
Secondly bokeh is a word that already exists and is used for the exact same thing that the new word would explain, which gives it a lead, however a small one.
On the other hand it would probably be easier to spread a defenition together with a new word, than the defenition of an existing one alone.

Now, in spite of the impression from the lenght of this post, this is not a really important issue for me, and I will gladly use whatever word that becomes used to talk of such delicate matters!
 
By the way,we are talking here about something visual and there's not one photo attached...!!! Unacceptable.

So,is this a good sofa or a bad bokeh?
 
Looks OK to me, Pherdinand.

I am trying to find the new thread button to announce my Summicron DR for sale. who can help me?

Rob.
 
I'm in for Bokeh, because 1) I dislike acronyms and 2) all my cameras are Japanese, so I feel I owe them at least a word in the lexicon of photography.

I got kind of confused though...in Canada, we pronounce it Boke eh? :)
 
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