Mr. Schneider…I would love to hear your arrogant and educated opinions…
I’m old-school as well…I paid little attention to “bokeh”, even as a professional in the 1990s. The character of the OOF areas concerned me very little. Either something was in focus or it wasn’t. I wouldn’t have known “creamy bokeh” if I had stepped in a puddle of it. I am now much more aware of it because of the attention that it receives.
When planning a shoot, I create a shot list in a notebook and previsualize each image. I list general parameters for each shot including the lens. I now find myself factoring in the OOF qualities when choosing a lens for a particular image. In a quiet portrait of a person with porcelain skin and flowing hair, sharp bubble bokeh will likely distract and draw the viewer’s eye away from the subject. Put the same subject flying a kite in a flowered field with hair blowing in the breeze, a more energetic bokeh may be called for. If I want swirly, bubbly, dreamy or creamy, I have a lens that will produce it, under the right conditions.
Specifics: I recently shot an outdoor environmental portrait of a musician, playing his guitar. The background was dark and out of focus but contained geometry that I used to frame the subject and guide the eyes around the image. It was important that those features and lines be subtle and out of focus, but present. I used a simple AF-S Nikkor 50mm f 1.8G and a Tokina AT-X Pro Macro 100 f2.8D. Both performed predictably and admirably. I also shot film in a Nikon FM2n with my trusty old Ai-converted Nikkor-SC Auto 50mm f1.4. That lens gives me very smooth low-contrast transition (and bubbly specular OOF highlights, but there weren’t any in that shot). I also brought my old Sonnar-formula Ai-converted Nikkor 105mm f2.5 (but I ran out of ambient light and lost the balance with my single strobe). Those four lenses are my go-to lenses for portraits partly because they allow me to use out-of-focus background features as compositional elements without rendering them in a distracting manner.
I don’t judge a type of “bokeh” as inherently good or bad. I see it as either appropriate or inappropriate for a certain image. I generally want it to go unnoticed unless it contributes something to the image. Nevertheless, it is an aesthetic element over which I have complete control through lens choice, distance and aperture.
This.
Everything that is within the borders of a photograph is a compositional part of that photograph. The “out of focus” areas, and how they look, are no less important to the overall effect of the photograph than the “subject”. Not every photo is a portrait or meant to draw our eye to one single thing in a small part of the frame. Sometimes you want creamy, sometimes you want double edged, sometimes you want soap bubbles (even if not often) (or ever).
If someone limits themselves, consciously or unconsciously, to a single style, they may have an innate preference for one single way the out of focus areas are rendered, but different ways of handling those areas will change the effect of the photo on the viewer.
There is no part of a photo, no part of what is in the visible frame, that is less important than any other part. Not every photograph must necessarily “draw the eye” to one part of the frame to the exclusion of other parts, even if there is a shallow DOF. Some yes, some no depending on the intent.
The way that the out of focus areas are rendered in shallow DOF photos has always been important in photography, even before calling it bokeh became a common pastime. It’s not something that just became important recently. It’s part of the frame so it’s important to the impact of your photo regardless if it is out of focus or not. You can creamy those parts of the photo, or double edge them, or bubble them. There may be only one way that an individual “likes” and applies that to everything he does, the one size fits all approach, but different scenes which present themselves to us might be better served by different lenses.
Or just shoot every thing at f/64 and dodge the issue entirely.
I generally prefer “creamy”, but understand it’s not right or wrong, just a personal fixation, and it likely limits me by keeping me from always seeing the photographic possibilities inherent in a given scene.
