Is bokeh falling out of favor?

[aperturemind]

Hey everyone,

Just joined after lurking for a long time.

I’ve been noticing a lot of shots lately that feel like they exist just to show off the blur—wide open apertures, crazy bokeh, but not much else. Don’t get me wrong, I love a nice background blur, but I kind of miss seeing images that feel like they mean something beyond just showing what the lens can do.

Is bokeh falling out of favor for everyone, or am I just getting old? How do you all approach wide-open shots these days—do you try to balance the blur with actual storytelling, or is it mostly about the lens effect now?

Threads like this one spurred this inquiry: The Great Bokeh Controversy: Snare or Delusion?

Curious to hear your thoughts!

 

[JoeV]

Bokeh seems to me a post-modernist aesthetic, a self-indulgent view of the mechanics of photography, rather than a tool to reveal new things about the world around us. I’m thinking here about the classic mid-20th century photo essay in magazines like Life, the subject was preeminent and the choice of lens aperture was out of necessity given the emulsions of the day; if it ended up with a wide aperture it was not because the photographer was thinking bokeh.

Also, in the era when rangefinder cameras were commonly used lens calibration at wide apertures was never entirely accurate, a professional wouldn’t risk an assignment just to achieve a shallow DOF unless lighting conditions precluded stopping down or using a strobe.

My hackles raise when I hear a YouTuber (note here that I’m also one) use the term “cinematic” when referring to bokeh, as in the classic era of film cinematography narrow apertures were the norm, making the job of focus puller easier to manage, and reducing the risk of wasting a day’s shoot on botched focus.

 

[Dogman]

I'm kinda tired of the whole bokeh concept. Can't say it's falling out of favor but it's not something I get all worked up over. Bokeh, IMO, is the anonymous supporting cast to a great actor and performance. It's there in the background, it's part of the picture but it should not dominate.

Nice first post, @aperturemind. Welcome to the club.




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[aperturemind]

Bokeh seems to me a post-modernist aesthetic, a self-indulgent view of the mechanics of photography, rather than a tool to reveal new things about the world around us. I’m thinking here about the classic mid-20th century photo essay in magazines like Life, the subject was preeminent and the choice of lens aperture was out of necessity given the emulsions of the day; if it ended up with a wide aperture it was not because the photographer was thinking bokeh.

Also, in the era when rangefinder cameras were commonly used lens calibration at wide apertures was never entirely accurate, a professional wouldn’t risk an assignment just to achieve a shallow DOF unless lighting conditions precluded stopping down or using a strobe.

My hackles raise when I hear a YouTuber (note here that I’m also one) use the term “cinematic” when referring to bokeh, as in the classic era of film cinematography narrow apertures were the norm, making the job of focus puller easier to manage, and reducing the risk of wasting a day’s shoot on botched focus.

Hey, thanks for the perspective! I hadn’t really thought about the whole rangefinder calibration angle—makes sense that back in the day, wide apertures were more of a necessity than a style choice. I can see why using “cinematic” to justify bokeh today might feel a bit like a stretch.

I’m curious, do you think there’s a way to use wide-open apertures today that actually adds to storytelling, or is it mostly just a tech show-off at this point?

 

[aperturemind]

I'm kinda tired of the whole bokeh concept. Can't say it's falling out of favor but it's not something I get all worked up over. Bokeh, IMO, is the anonymous supporting cast to a great actor and performance. It's there in the background, it's part of the picture but it should not dominate.

Nice first post, @aperturemind. Welcome to the club.

Thank you.

I like that analogy—a supporting cast rather than the star. Totally agree that when the blur starts stealing the spotlight, the photo loses some of its impact.

Do you find yourself actively stopping down more to keep the background from taking over, or do you just let it happen and focus on framing and subject instead?

 

[JoeV]

I can imagine a photo with sharply defined foreground subject, say a person working in a factory, and out of focus but recognizable subject in the background, say that person’s sweatshop boss. The use of bokeh can help to define the relationship between the two people.

But in general, photography is a visual art that relies on recognition of subjects (otherwise it’d be an unrecognizable mess of random blobs of light and color), and bokeh tends to isolated one subject from their surroundings, which can serve the purpose of portraiture but intrinsically isolates that subject from the larger context. More interesting photographs tend toward revealing the larger context, in my opinion, which bokeh doesn’t serves as well.

(Edit for context)

 

[Godfrey]

Hey everyone,

Just joined after lurking for a long time.

I’ve been noticing a lot of shots lately that feel like they exist just to show off the blur—wide open apertures, crazy bokeh, but not much else. Don’t get me wrong, I love a nice background blur, but I kind of miss seeing images that feel like they mean something beyond just showing what the lens can do.

Is bokeh falling out of favor for everyone, or am I just getting old? How do you all approach wide-open shots these days—do you try to balance the blur with actual storytelling, or is it mostly about the lens effect now?

Threads like this one spurred this inquiry: The Great Bokeh Controversy: Snare or Delusion?

Curious to hear your thoughts!

How can "the subjective visual impression of the out of focus areas of an image" (quoting Jason in the link you sent around) fall out of favor? 🤔

Like with any/everything else in art, overuse of a particular aesthetic effect without thought, without identifiable intent, becomes tedious and droll. Bokeh does not mean simply "the subject is sharp and pops out from a blurred miasma of the rest of the photograph" ... bokeh applies to more than just the wide-open 50/1.4 and someone's head in the foreground against the mush of background. Bokeh is whatever the rendering of the photo appears like off the plane of critical focus, be it at f/0.95 or f/22. It's how the not-critically-sharp portions of the image appear. "Good bokeh" means that the blur is nicely shaped and pleasing to the eye, "bad bokeh" means that it is not.

Whether the photograph has any merit aesthetically is independent and orthogonal to whether it has good or bad bokeh.

So ... How do I approach 'wide-open shots' these days? The same way I always have, at least always try to: I try to make every element of my photographs work towards an aesthetic whole. If I blur the background with a large lens opening, it's because I want the viewers' attention to be drawn to the sharp bits. If I sharpen up the background with a small lens opening, it's because I feel the background details lend impact and meaning to the subject and the sharper bits. Focal length and distance also play in this game, as they affect perspective and modeling.

I don't just go out seeing if I can get the blurriest blurred background and a razor sharp nose on my subject... LOL!!

To wit: I spent some time arranging the elements and trying different lenses/lens openings/distances/etc to achieve this photo of the sausage bread I made for the holidays:

Home-made Sausage Bread - Santa Clara 2025
Leica M10-R + Summarit-M 75mm f/2.5
ISO 200 @ f/2.5 @ 1/60​

Hope that helps!™ Godfrey

 

[ellisson]

The extent of blurring is another consideration for me. Do you want context in the image? I favor images that preserve some context that the background provides. Blurring everything to the extent that all context is lost makes photos less interesting to me. Blurring for the sake of blurring with nothing in focus is like abstract painting to me; some love it, some can take it in small doses, some can't relate to it at all.

 

[aperturemind]

That helps, yeah. I think part of what rubs me wrong is exactly what you’re getting at — people using “bokeh” as shorthand for intent, when really it’s just one of the rendering characteristics, not the point of the photo.
Also fair point that it’s not just a wide-open thing. I probably use the word too loosely myself to mean “background blur” rather than the quality of it.
That sausage bread shot is a good example of it feeling deliberate rather than flashy. When you’re out shooting, do you find yourself deciding on aperture early, or does it usually fall out of working the scene and adjusting as you go?
Seeing the image helps, actually. The blur just sort of gets out of the way — it doesn’t call attention to itself, and the textures in the bread are doing most of the work anyway. It feels calm, not “look what my lens can do.”
Out of curiosity, if you’d stopped down a bit more and let more of the background come into focus, do you think it would’ve added anything, or just cluttered things up?

 

[aperturemind]

@JoeV - That makes sense, and I like how you framed it around context. The factory example is good —using blur to suggest a relationship instead of just erasing the background. Do you think this is more about how bokeh is commonly used today rather than the tool itself? Like, could context-forward shooting just be out of fashion right now, or am I just not looking in the right places?

 

[Godfrey]

That helps, yeah. I think part of what rubs me wrong is exactly what you’re getting at — people using “bokeh” as shorthand for intent, when really it’s just one of the rendering characteristics, not the point of the photo.
Also fair point that it’s not just a wide-open thing. I probably use the word too loosely myself to mean “background blur” rather than the quality of it.
That sausage bread shot is a good example of it feeling deliberate rather than flashy. When you’re out shooting, do you find yourself deciding on aperture early, or does it usually fall out of working the scene and adjusting as you go?
Seeing the image helps, actually. The blur just sort of gets out of the way — it doesn’t call attention to itself, and the textures in the bread are doing most of the work anyway. It feels calm, not “look what my lens can do.”
Out of curiosity, if you’d stopped down a bit more and let more of the background come into focus, do you think it would’ve added anything, or just cluttered things up?

I'm glad my babble helps. 😉

When I'm out shooting, rather than doing still life in controlled circumstances, I usually have an idea before I go what it is I'm looking for and pick the (smaller) equipment kit on that basis. I usually have an idea what lens opening with whatever lens/camera/etc I'm carrying will do (I've been doing this a very very long time...!) and set up a baseline for exposure based on that. And then I modify things as different scenes and situations, different photo opportunities, present themself (and the modifications are always limited because, of course, I have a limited amount of gear with me unlike at home...). I don't like to be dogmatic about my settings and such, I tend to move in particular directions due to my intent and based on my experience from shooting over time, but working with a limited kit when your away from home or the studio means making do ... and often just saying, "Hmm, I can't get that shot right now. I'll have to come back here with different gear and hope that the same thing presents itself."

For this photo of the sausage bread, I tried lens openings from f/2.5 down to f/11. I felt that sharpening up the surrounding elements of the scene didn't let my eye home in on the bread so directly and easily, and therefore made the photograph less appealing, because the intent was to show off and interest viewers in the bread. 😉

Hmm. Gotta bake another couple of loaves of that bread this weekend, before the cheese goes bad. 😀

G

 

[Mcary]

Through I admittedly often use a larger aperture being it F1.4 when shooting 35mm film or F3.5 when shooting 6x6 MF I honestly really never cared about bokeh. The usually reason that I choose to use a large aperture is that I'm unable to remove a distracting back ground by other means such as changing shooting position. Personally whither its a portrait or shoot of a classic car I much prefer photographs that surround the main subject with an interesting foreground and background.

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[rfaspen]

Always found the whole bokeh as "primary" kind of funny. For me....
I like to use DoF to isolate or draw focus to a subject. OOF area "bokeh" is a consequence. I absolutely appreciate it when that is not distracting or somehow pleasant, but don't forget my subject please! So...yeah I'm kinda a bokeh person but it's pragmatic. In other words, I think it's simple for me. I'm aware of the folks totally " focused" on bokeh. That's not part of my cosmology. But you'll still hear me comment when bokeh is a good proper attractive attribute. I thought all or most of us here at RFF were like that.

 

[aperturemind]

The extent of blurring is another consideration for me. Do you want context in the image? I favor images that preserve some context that the background provides. Blurring everything to the extent that all context is lost makes photos less interesting to me. Blurring for the sake of blurring with nothing in focus is like abstract painting to me; some love it, some can take it in small doses, some can't relate to it at all.

Yeah, that’s pretty much where I land too. I don’t mind blur at all, but once the context disappears completely, I start losing interest. I like having just enough background to know where the subject lives.

 

[Harry the K]

Bokeh is, and always was and will be, like mustard: You can´t use it for every opportunity. On Godfrey´s sausage bread, yes, on my cherry cake, definitely no.

 

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Nice discussion here. I think it helps me understand why I love my Sony 1.8 85mm lens so much, especially when I'm 'ON AUTO' when using it. The engineers have, for good or bad, programmed it to give just the right amount of bokeh in almost every instance. Makes my picture taking a whole lot easier and I'm also learning how I might set my camera when using other less 'auto' lenses to achieve the same effect. I tend to learn a lot thru observation.
Thanks for having me here, Happy New Year to you all.

 

[Bill Blackwell]

I’ve been shooting since around 1972. Fast lenses of the 1960s and 1970s were made to take pictures in low light. This is when maximum film speeds were no higher than ASA/ISO 400. When shooting at or near wide-open with normal to long FL lenses it was just accepted that your background would be blurred, but in my world not many took notice of OOF character. It was simply about the in-focus subject(s).

The first time I heard the word "bokeh" was around 25-years ago when digital began taking dominance over film. It wasn't until then that I paid any attention to OOF renderings at all. In the digital world - even 25-years ago - we could push ASA/ISO speeds to 10,000 or more. Then photographers started shooting fast lenses wide-open in natural bright light – even using neutral density filters to get that bokeh experience. This likely - unbeknownst to me - was going on with film as early as the 1980s when Kodak produced ASA/ISO 3200 film.

Today I believe it's still “a thing” to the point of the character of out of focus rendering is as important – if not more important – than the in-focus character of a lens. So, people still do obsess over the character of their bokeh.

 

[Bill Blackwell]

Leica M11-P, LLL 50mm f/1.2 "1966"

There are times when an in-focus background would just be a distraction.

 

[rogxwhit]

Given that (hopefully!) we know how to expose an image well and maybe process it further - all that being much about tonalities, which have crucial emotional import - and that we may have a good eye for framing - it seems to me that how a lens renders is equally important to the feel of an image, its overall character & emotional meaning. Such rendering will include bokeh along with other attributes - all of which can contribute to an image's texture.

So let's not say that bokeh is unimportant! But a hypothetical image consisting of bokeh & little else - yes, I'd probably pass on by.

There are other forms of blur, of course, some provided by such as ICM or a 10-stop ND, which can easily be just as little engaging & can make you hope that the protagonist will soon grow out of it and move on ...

An image can be a composite of dialogues - between light & shade, or sharpness & blur amongst them - all of which activates the picture space that a viewer can enter & engage with. It's not just a matter of pointing the camera at a 'thing' and going click! Although 'things' can occasion resonances of their own ...

 

[Dogman]

Do you find yourself actively stopping down more to keep the background from taking over, or do you just let it happen and focus on framing and subject instead?

Honestly, I don't really think about it. It would depend on the type of photography being done. A carefully orchestrated, staged, etc., photograph would allow complete control. I don't do that much. I'm more of a casual, candid, see-it-and-shoot it photographer. I guess I'm on auto-pilot. So I guess I would be in the focus/frame group.

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