UGLY Bokeh

[Pherdinand]

"Different" indeed, ray.
I am still curious about the OOF highlights produced by the Sonnar 50/1.5 when stopped down to f/4-f/5.6 - the diaphragm in this setting has a strange star-shape.

 

[bmicklea]

Do I smell an anti-project? The single worst, but non-accidental, picture ever taken with an RF?

😉

 

[celluloidprop]

Most of the 'bad bokeh' examples I see online are problems with composition, not the lens. No lens is going to perform heroically with a busy background and 1/8 of the frame in focus.

 

[JoeFriday]

"Different" indeed, ray.
I am still curious about the OOF highlights produced by the Sonnar 50/1.5 when stopped down to f/4-f/5.6 - the diaphragm in this setting has a strange star-shape.

Pherdi, maybe I'll drag my Contax out and shoot some deliberate shots like that.. I agree that the diaphragm looks like it should take some nasty shots that way, but I don't recall any negs showing nasty bokeh because of it.. maybe I never shoot at that stop, tho

 

[richard_l]

Not all diaphragm shaped images are relevant to bokeh. They may be ghost images, a form of flare, rather than out of focus highlights.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Everybody is a Bokeh Critic these days.

I know! Half the people can't agree on what it means, anyway. I think many of you have some pretty high standards for bokeh. Granted, there are some pretty horrific bokeh samples here, but then there are others (like yours, Brian) that are not bad at all. A Canon lens with bad bokeh? Mediocre, maybe, but bad, I haven't seen a shot taken with a Canon lens that says "bad bokeh".

It's also about knowing your lens and when not to use it to get the bad bokeh, like sockeyed. A good craftsman (or craftsperson, don't go and personcott me!) knows when not to use his/her/its tools.

"Si todas las cosas que valen la pena fueran fáciles, cualquier bruto las haría."

 

[ywenz]

how do you pronounce bokeh? ....bokey? or bokegh?

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

As in "okay" but with a "b" in the beginning and without emphasizing the "ay" (I'm no expert, but it's been corroborated by a few people with Japanese connections)

 

[Doug]

The final "h" was added to the English spelling to keep us from calling it "bowk", and my understanding is that the "e" is pronounced as in "pegleg", not as in "heyday".

 

[ChrisN]

I'm really fascinated by the language used when discussing bokeh. In a recent thread, Xcapekey posted the following:

"i like the wide array of lenses available for leica....they each have their own feel to them...it's sort of like choosing a brush for painting....but don't get too hung up...a bad picture with a good lens is still a bad picture

i have to say, the lens that i can tell apart the easiest (from what i've tried) is the summar wide open...creamy...soft...nice bleeding highlights...most of the lenses after f8 get tougher to distinguish....also, my canon 35mm f1.8 has a similar effect wide open...not the best for technical work but nice for atmosphere...

i also like the look of the summitar wide open vs. my hexanon when i want dreamy...however, if i really want my subject o jump out in a contrasty way, i'll use the 50mm hexanon...the summitar and summar have a more liquid melt from point of focus to bokeh"

Creamy, soft, nice bleeding highlights, liquid melt ... great vocabulary! This is a bit like listening to wine connoisseurs - I don't have the knowledge/awareness to follow the meanings and comparisons, but I can see that others do.

How about a glossary?

 

[Solinar]

Chris, we could called a soft out of focus background, but unfortunately the word soft often has negative connotation in modern photography, especially when describing a lens. Granted that most of the lens I like to use have center MTF performance that is half that of modern primes.

"Creamy smooth," or "buttery smooth," out of focus areas is how I descrribe the signature of my favorite classic lenses.

Then you have the smooth transitions of softness from the edges to center sharpness that occurs with more than a few classic lenses. Is there an expression for this?

I know that I do like the look where out of focus elements in the background seem to melt into one another. What I don't like is a background with that harsh jig saw puzzle look on a couple of my lenses when they are used wide open.

 

[sockeyed]

Buttery...creamy - yum.

Some of the best adjectives I've read come from wine tasting literature. Oz Clarke has some great superlative descriptions. Some examples I recall:

"like an unripe apple burnished on a cold steel blade"

"like dampened bonfires, coal smoke and pencil shavings".

Anyone care to try something similar re. bokeh?

"Bokeh like the shattered window of a 1957 Trabant, illuminated by milky light barely penetrating the factory smog."

 

[denishr]

I just found an example which might illustrate the notion of "bokeh" for the uninitiated...

Taken with a Nikon FM and Nikkor 50/1.8 AIS (I think - in any case, it was a "standard" 50/1.8 Nikkor).

You might say that, since I haven't the same photo shot with another lens, this proves nothing - but, still.... 🙁

Anyway, here's my son last Christmas...

PS: I guess it's not really necessary to mention that I consider this lens to produce "bad bokeh" 😉

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

I think that bokeh is better left "undefined". It's already defined; it is a very subjective term, and does not translate well.

You can say that bokeh is indeed foggy and a sharp grasp of it would be, well, like an Escher drawing making sense of itself. Dammit Spock, I'm a photographer, not a linguist.

 

[Doug]

"Bokeh like the shattered window of a 1957 Trabant, illuminated by milky light barely penetrating the factory smog."

LOL, I love it! I'd like to see a photo exemplifying that particular bokeh. Since the word itself carries no connotation of character, just fuzziness, we're free (nay, encouraged!) to string poetic adjectives along with it to spark the imagination.

I think Denis's shot of his son shows a relatively common treatment of OOF highlights that I just think of as a "flat disk". Maybe a trace of undercorrected spherical abberation, going by the examples on one bokeh web page. Seems to me modern lenses are trending to this look as abberations are better corrected all-round, kind of a "neutral" look I think. Like a rich custard garnished with slices of fresh banana? 🙂