Is bokeh falling out of favor?

[splitimageview]

@Archiver these photos are not bokeh for the sake of bokeh. Well, I suppose the ginger beer could qualify as just a showcase of the OOF areas. 😀

But the other two tell a story...and the bokeh is pleasing, not distracting. Excellent work.

It's unusual for a lens to have pleasing foreground blur, nicely done with the C Sonnar.

 

[Erik van Straten]

gelatin silver print (summicron 50mm f2 rigid) leica m3

My brother in 1979 when he started his career as a professional mathematician.

 

[Archiver]

gelatin silver print (summicron 50mm f2 rigid) leica m3

My brother in 1979 when he started his career as a professional mathematician.

View attachment 4885213

I love how you have all these super photos from decades ago, and still use the same gear to take similarly super photos now. In theory, I could do this with Dad's Pentax and Minolta cameras, but not the long history of use up until now.

 

[peterm1]

All "pop" fads (and all fads are by their nature little more than "pop") ultimately suffer from a backlash and then fade into oblivion - yesterday's news. The same fairly shallow and thoughtless impulse that makes them a fad ultimately bring about their demise - think Hula hoops, Tamagotchi's, yo-yo's and in present day more serious and problematic fads like making up absurd pronouns then demanding not only that people use them but that they must actually believe they are real. In short, all worms eventually turn.

And though I must admit that to some extent I also am a bokeh aficionado, and love good bokeh that enhances images and is good in the context of those images, I must admit that there is a bit of an element of this kind of faddishness about the idea of bokeh. How many times have I seen reviews after reviews after reviews on the internet - photos of out of focus elements and nothing much else of merit (if anything) in the images posted. So much so, that it kind of reminds me of that old Seinfeld episode "Look at the baby - ya gotta see the baby" except in the case of bokeh it is "Look at the bokeh - ya gotta see the bokeh!"

So, in short, we should accept that interesting bokeh can sometimes add value to an image both by blurring the background to avoid distractions and by adding some distinctive and pleasant qualities to it, we need to also accept that it's only one part of the overall image and that a crappy image is still a crappy image - "great" bokeh or not.

Can't help myself. I have to add in a clip from Seinfeld.

 

[splitimageview]

@Erik van Straten this appears exceedingly dark on my display, he's nearly a silhouette.

gelatin silver print (summicron 50mm f2 rigid) leica m3

My brother in 1979 when he started his career as a professional mathematician.

View attachment 4885213

 

[boojum]

Some bokeh shots from different lenses. The first of Bugatti bokeh with a Sony A7M II and the lovely Sony Zeiss 55mm f/1.8 ZA. The second is a fave of mine, some spring Rhododendrons over at Fort Columbia and shot with an M9 + the Cooke Amotal at f/4.0. Nice bokeh and great detail of the residual reddish hues and of the pistils. Nice trick, Cooke. And Foxglove under my porch a few summers back. M9 + Skyllaney Bertele Sonnar 5cm f/2.0 at f/2.0.

Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic, 1936 by West Phalia, on Flickr

L1002835 by West Phalia, on Flickr

L1002853 by West Phalia, on Flickr

​

 

[boojum]

And as a parting shot the M9 again but with a CV 35mm f/1.4 Nokton II at f/1.4 of some red Rhodies.

Rhodies, Voigtländer 35mm, f/1.4, f/1.4 by West Phalia, on Flickr​

 

[Freakscene]

gelatin silver print (summicron 50mm f2 rigid) leica m3

My brother in 1979 when he started his career as a professional mathematician.

View attachment 4885213

Duco van Straten is your brother? Wow. His explanation of Severi strata is so lucid. Amazing.

 

[Freakscene]

It's unusual for a lens to have pleasing foreground blur, nicely done with the C Sonnar.

Control of spherical aberrations largely determines the type of bokeh a lens produces. These vary in front of, and behind, the focus plane. Until computer design facilitated modelling these for fine tuning, it was hard to balance them, and usually designers were not so concerned about correction closer than the plane of focus. The C Sonnar bokeh looks nice because spherical aberrations are undercorrected in front and behind the plane of focus. With the Zeiss ZM 35mm f1.4 it is controlled very well in both directions, facilitated by awareness of the issue and modern design, glass, lens construction and coatings. Coatings only really matter in that they facilitate using a large number of elements to correct aberrations.

 

[Archiver]

Control of spherical aberrations largely determines the type of bokeh a lens produces. These vary in front of, and behind, the focus plane. Until computer design facilitated modelling these for fine tuning, it was hard to balance them, and usually designers were not so concerned about correction closer than the plane of focus. The C Sonnar bokeh looks nice because spherical aberrations are undercorrected in front and behind the plane of focus. With the Zeiss ZM 35mm f1.4 it is controlled very well in both directions, facilitated by awareness of the issue and modern design, glass, lens construction and coatings. Coatings only really matter in that they facilitate using a large number of elements to correct aberrations.

I imagine you as the bearded fellow in your profile in a vast room filled with old lenses, next to stacks of manila folders labeled Property of Kodak - Confidential, furiously typing on a split keyboard with a giant Eizo monitor. 😄

 

[Freakscene]

I imagine you as the bearded fellow in your profile in a vast room filled with old lenses, next to stacks of manila folders labeled Property of Kodak - Confidential, furiously typing on a split keyboard with a giant Eizo monitor. 😄

I am not very* old. And the folders are marked "Commercial-in-Confidence" not "Confidential". I was trained at Kodak in their very last intake of technical staff, and didn't last very long - I left before the great unfolding. But that photo is me and virtually everything else you propose is almost spot on.

It's clearly time to de-correlate my on line and real life personas.

*According to me 😂

 

[Erik van Straten]

Duco van Straten is your brother? Wow. His explanation of Severi strata is so lucid. Amazing.

Yes, here he is more recently with his wife and a friend.


Duco van Straten (left) in Utrecht 2025

Leica lllc wartime grey, Summar 50mm f2 on Tmax400.

Utrecht, 2025

 

[Freakscene]

Yes, here he is more recently with his wife and a friend.


Duco van Straten (left) in Utrecht 2025

Leica lllc wartime grey, Summar 50mm f2 on Tmax400.

Utrecht, 2025
View attachment 4885246

Your family is very talented.

 

[Erik van Straten]

Your family is very talented.

Thanks!

 

[Archiver]

It's clearly time to de-correlate my on line and real life personas.

I wouldn't worry about it. Given how much time you spent volunteering with Medicin Sans Frontiers and working at that French polytechnique, no one would match that with your online persona anyway. Just like how I used to work at the cannery in Shepparton before moving to Brisbane for a job in marketing all those years ago. 😉

 

[Freakscene]

I worked at the Golden Circle cannery as an undergrad. I am not sure how popular canned pineapple is outside Australia, NZ and the Pacific. But in those places it is popular. I worked at a chicken abattoir too.

 

[boojum]

I worked at the Golden Circle cannery as an undergrad. I am not sure how popular canned pineapple is outside Australia, NZ and the Pacific. But in those places it is popular. I worked at a chicken abattoir too.

We eat canned pineapple Stateside. Chicken, too. ;o)

 

[Mark240590]

I think in digital circles no… but my opinion on film is you always want some depth of field. It’s very rare I shoot a lens wide open. Usually only because the light dictates it.