Bokeh Mania: Can It Be Stopped?

At first, it was just a harmless bit of silliness, like <i>giclée</i>. Now the Bokian Heresy threatens all

of photography as we know it. Clearly, it is time to take a stand.<p><p>

 

What is 'bokeh' anyway? No one seems to be quite sure, but it refers to the quality of blurred areas in a

photograph. Smooth blur is considered desirable, and is referred to as 'creamy bokeh' (new from Kellog's®).

Jagged blur with angular shapes is undesirable to the Bokians, and is called 'bad bokeh' or 'nervous bokeh' or

'nissan bokeh'. No one had heard of 'bokeh' before the mid-90s, although I have seen unsubstantiated accounts of

Japanese photographers using the term in the 60s. (Boké is a Japanese work meaning 'blur'.)<p><p>

 

What harm is there in this? Well, due to the awesome power of the Internet to instantaneously spread garble to

every corner of the world, 'bokeh' is taking over. (2.5 megahits on Google.) It is discussed everywhere,

including by me. I will tell you precisely why it is Evil after this.<p><p>

 

<b>DISCLAIMER:</b> I agree that there is such a thing as blur. I also agree that this blur can, in some cases,

make a contribution to the overall quality of an image. It can help isolate a subject, create a particular mood,

and please the viewer. It is even something to be consciously considered when making a photograph. I even agree

that in <i>some</i> cases, the lens used will have a significant effect on the blur. In other cases, the same

lens may produce undesirable results.<p><p>

 

So why do I hate the term and its adherents so?<p><p>

 

1) The term is confusing and imprecise, and smacks of the pseudo-artistic. Examples can be found <a

href="http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/beautiful-examples-of-bokeh-photography/">here</a>. Some of them exhibit

lovely OOF blur, while others are blurred all over, and yet others have qualities considered harmful to

'bokeh'.<p><p>

 

2) It is most often used to describe the qualities of a lens, rather than those of an image. Lenses are called

'Plastic Fantastic' and 'Cream Machine'. In fact, the quality of blurred areas is dependent on many factors: the

distance from subject-to-background and its ratio to lens-to-subject distance; the contrast of the background;

the presence or absence of specular highlights; the color harmonies which may exist in the background, etc.

Bokians frequently value 'bokeh' above many more important and <i>measurable</i> qualities of a lens. I read a

comment recently that ran something like, "You've spent all that time talking about the lens, but you said

nothing about the bokeh!"<p><p>

 

3) It has become an all-consuming passion, almost a true mania. We had this sort of thing long ago, but there was

no Internet to provide the intense heterodyning effect. Now a single comment by a portfolio-less gearhead can

spread in days until everyone 'agrees' that the Canikon 60mm f.75 has terrible 'bokeh'. On another site, a new

wedding shooter posted a number of images, most of which were slightly out-of-focus. He defended himself by

saying, "I shot at f1.2 [Canon 50mm] to get some great bokeh." I have never heard of a client refusing to pay

because her wedding album had 'nervous bokeh'. And the lengths to which Bokians will go is incredibe. Take

'outlining' for example. This is when blur circles have a faint ring of color around them, cause by longitudinal

chromatic aberration. I have probably looked at millions of images in my life, and never noticed this. Bokians

obsess over it--"The blur circle on the lower left has outlining.'<p><p>

 

4) There is a strong <strike>mythical</strike> mystical element to the use of the term. Like 'Leica Glow', its

true nature can only be appreciated by the initiated. New photographers latch onto this like limpets. They

haven't learned how to make good images yet, but they can have 'creamy bokeh'! And they can see and appreciate

this thing that ordinary viewers can't. They can also justify their gear purchases--it upgraded their 'bokeh'.<p><p>

 

Enough rant. Matt Laur, please do not post one of your wonderful dog portraits. The backgrounds are lovely

because of their distance and the soft light on them.

 

<p>Interesting post Les. Somehow I feel you are beating up a kitten.</p>

<p>The only issue I have with Bokeh is that every single still life of food uses bokeh to death. Look through a food magazine sometime, and by the end you will be craving a sharp image of anything.</p>

<p>This post be betty betty bad karma!</p>

<p>Thought for the day: One cannot fully appreciate the bokeh of a fine lens on anything but a giclee print, because of the gaussian spray pattern.</p>

<p>Weird link for the day: <a href="http://www.graphic-fusion.com/beyondbokeh.htm">http://www.graphic-fusion.com/beyondbokeh.htm</a></p>

<p>On another note, I'm reminded of a local artist's work that's all bokeh. That's to say it's all WAAAY out of focus. I suspect he doesn't use a lens (seriously). I'm guessing he uses a body cap with a 3/8" hole drilled in it.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>The only issue I have with Bokeh is that every single still life of food uses bokeh to death. Look through a food magazine sometime, and by the end you will be craving a sharp image of anything.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>This is my only issue with the term bokeh. It is when it is improperly used. With Phil's food examples, it is SHALLOW DEPTH OF FIELD that could be considered overused, not the qualities of the out of focus areas (Bokeh)</p>

<p>The apparent vagueness of the word "bokeh" comes from it being used by people who don't really know what it means. As I understand it, the original usage referred specifically to the quality of out-of-focus specular highlights, not simply the general quality of out-of-focus areas.</p>

<p>"bokeh" is a word used mostly by people who do not understand that Bokeh, Depth of Field and Background Blur are three entirely different things due to entirely different optical phenomema and are calculated by entirely different equations.</p>

<p>So not only is it overused, it's incorrectly used. To see bokeh requires "golden eyes", similar to the "golden ears" possessed by audiophiles who can clearly hear the superiority of vinyl records over CDs.</p>

<blockquote>As I understand it, the original usage referred specifically to the quality of out-of-focus specular highlights, not simply the general quality of out-of-focus areas.</blockquote><p><p>

 

I have read exactly the opposite in various places. That's one of 'bokeh's' many problems.

<p>You illustrate my big beef with bokeh -- that the term is so often misused -- in this sentence:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>In fact, the quality of blurred areas is dependent on many factors: the distance from subject-to-background and its ratio to lens-to-subject distance; the contrast of the background; the presence or absence of specular highlights; the color harmonies which may exist in the background, etc.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Of your factors, only the presence or absence of specular highlights has any real bearing on bokeh. The others certainly affect the look of the out-of-focus areas of the image, but not the bokeh. The bokeh is a characteristic of the lens (at that particular aperture and focus distance (and focal length, for a zoom)) and is there regardless of image content, but it is most visible on small specular highlights.</p>

<p>I have no problem with people obsessing about bokeh; people are free to obsess about whatever they choose. But those who obsess about something ought to know what it means!</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Gotta tell you....over 30 years ago now we,(working pro portraitists) were <em><strong>creating</strong> </em>whatever Bokeh effects we wanted for any particular shoot situation, and lens choice as well......<br>

I tell you Les, nothing new is happening here at all.....even the "old" methods are largely forgotten...or perhaps just replaced by a desire for only partially understood terms and, naturally, the need to be photographically politically correct.<br>

Like other often misunderstood fads.....Z System, HDR, come easily to mind.....and will become as easily extinct as the drive for fashion continues.....</p>

 

<p>In (some parts of) Scotland the word 'boak' means to upchuck, throw up....... and to feel a wee bit boaky is to ....well anticipate the act of the boak.</p>

<p>SO when I hear the word bokeh, it brings to mind something else.</p>

<p>And creamy bokeh....oh well lets not go there shall we.</p>

<p>For you linguists out there, here's the cultural reference: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=boak</p>

<p>Good read, Les. Another obsession of mass delusion...reminds me of the tulipmania.</p>

<p>Really, Les? You let loose a counter-bokeh insurgency, and <em>I'm</em> the evil villain you're using to rally the peasants with the pitchforks? I don't know whether to be flattered or what. Still, I just got in from walking my dogs in the hot July sun, and one of them even chased a large woodchuck to ground. She's hot and bothered, but that didn't stop me from sitting her in front of a fan in a quick attempt to throw an actual photograph into this conversation.<br /><br />I'm in this camp: we bring up the word "bokeh" as shorthand for "quality of the out of focus background." It's handy to have just two syllables for all that, isn't it? Yes, the background often just doesn't matter. And no, the bride's not going to refuse to purchase her portrait just because the tree branches behind her are doubled-up and jaggy-looking, or the glints off of the chandelier behind her are making hard rings bigger than her eyes. But just because she isn't going to (or be able to) articulate what it is about those features that are a bit distracting doesn't mean that shown a similar shot without them, she wouldn't recognize that one photo is more appealing than the other.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Matt Laur, please do not post one of your wonderful dog portraits. The backgrounds are lovely because of their distance and the soft light on them.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Fine. How about a very <em>non-</em>lovely snapshot of a hot dog that just chased a woodchuck? How about a close-by background complete with shiny bits lit by the hideous direct output of a speedlight? I put a metal thermos and a collander on a dark chair, and took these two shots from the same position, under the same exact conditions, using two different prime lenses of the exact same focal length, opened up to the same aperture. Of course the over-lit specular junk in the background is distracting in both images. But you can't <em>really</em> say that it's pointless yammering to talk about the qualitative differences between the two, can you? It's not cultish, or fashion, or silly to examine whether or not you care about how a lens handles such stuff. In an <em>actual </em>photograph, taken of a real subject under more challenging circumstances (say, at a wedding reception) why not reach for the lens that does what you like, instead of what annoys?<br /><br />We talk about which lenses flare, which have worse CA, which distort more in which ways ... so why not also talk about which ones happen to make a busier hash of the OoF background? If it doesn't matter for a given person's photography, then it really doesn't matter. End of story. If you notice things that are more or less obvious depending on which tool you grab, why not be conscious of it? Personally, I'm not embarassed to use a short simple word when mentioning those artifacts (or the lack of them). Yes, I'm annoyed when people confuse the decision (or necessity) to use shallow DoF with "using bokeh." Drives me crazy. But I don't rant about it, I just use the word and address the underlying notion as appropriately as I can, hoping it will rub off a bit. <br /><br /></p><div></div>

<p>If you want to try and be cool, you say "bokeh" for back ground blur. If you want to communicate in a modest and more realistic way you say "back ground blur". </p>

<p>Zeiss created a very indepth technical document on this. Its pretty good.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.zeiss.com/c12567a8003b58b9/Contents-Frame/24dfa5e3c57b1ee0c12576fe004877fb">http://www.zeiss.com/c12567a8003b58b9/Contents-Frame/24dfa5e3c57b1ee0c12576fe004877fb</a><br /><br /></p>

<p>Thanks Matt for your post - I vastly prefer #2. People can call it whatever they want - the correct term to me is boekh and it is a property of the lens; specifically how the OOF disks are rendered (not only the highlights - though they are the most obvious ones that show the difference in bokeh). I consider bokeh reasonably well defined - the fact that people apply it incorrectly (for DOF) or inappropriately (any image with OOF highlights) isn't the fault of an imprecise definition but people not understanding what it means. BTW, it's nisen-bokeh not "Nissan bokeh".</p>

<p>In the late 1970's I worked in the film laboratory industry in Hollywood (actually Burbank,CA). My boss, a retired cameraman, owned a set of lenses designed for Mitchell 35MM motion picture cameras. Super Baltars , I believe they were.</p>

<p>When I asked about them one day, he told me these were from the 1950's and that they worth thousands of dollars. The reason: they were designed to have what he called "gentle" out of focus areas, at all apertures. Especially wide open.</p>

<p>So what ever the out focus highlights smoothness or harshness is called, lens designers were considering it before most of us were born.</p>

<p>PS: Matt, that's a damn handsome pooch!</p>

<p>Sarah, I know that you're a genius, but your Bokeh filters are just brilliant!</p>

<p>Just think if Capa had them, there would never have been a Zeiss vs. Leica discussion, the Sarah Von Zeiss Bokeh Filter would have turned the world upside down.</p>

<p>Can I special order a Smiley Face Bokeh Filter?</p>

<p>I am unworthy...</p>

<p>Sarah, I read a photography book about 15 years ago that detailed a similar process, except it used different shapes than you've suggested, and was simply placed on the lens like a filter. I think they even recommended using black construction paper. For the mo2st dramatic effects, they recommended using a tinfoil background, shiny side toward the camera. The one shape that I specifically remember was of a candle taper with a flame. It was interesting, but I never tried it.</p>

<p><strong>Matt:</strong> Yes, the second image has slightly better blur. That's one syllable, or at least it is most places outside of Philadelphia, where we say 'buh-LUR'. (We also say 'NOR-thur-in' and 'SUTH-er-in'.) The difference is slight, but it's there--I was careful to say this in the OP. But image #1 seems to me to have slightly lower contrast on the dog, which is a plus in this situation.</p>

<p>If you want exceptionally pleasing blur, of course, you need a Dallmeyer Petzval-formula lens from about 1895. It was designed to have a degree (often variable) of under-corrected spherical aberration. (I will kill the person who calls this UCSA.) Lovely images are possible with these.</p>

<p>I neglected to add in my OP that I feel the Bokian Heresy is leading to the current horrid overuse of shallow DOF. I read quotes like, "You buy an 85mm f1.4 to use it wide-open most of the time."</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Dualing 50mm lenses. Non-imaginary differences.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Which one does the dog like?<br>

Great debate. The only time I become a Bokenian is when I achieve it.<br>

PS: Is a Dualing 50 the same as a stereoscopic set up? :)</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Depth of Field, F2.8. repeat until it sounds like Broke' record.</p>

<p>mmm... lessee of what we're in denial... the fact that the statistically significant 95% sample of wallet-shaking camera owners who can't tell a good picture from their... kitchen knife have consistently pushed generations of good pension-anxious corporate engineers to build nothing but sharp sharp flat sharp flat flat sharp more sharp did i say sharp? (granted, include military-funded quest for reading the time off a cuban rocket expert's watch)<br /><br />anyway, henri answered this one <em>à la sauvette </em>back in 1952. no big war in the news. let's talk some bokeh please. shaken, <em>pas </em>stirred. eh, it's heavy on the syrah... wake up, mr. grenache. i know, i'm cheap tonite. what do you want? rhône season again</p>

<p>All Bokeh is a newcomers buzzward for out of focus effects. Usage of the B word just means you are a newbie; a follower; a person who like preppie buzzwards for old stuff.</p>

<p>In cine work; out of focus effects were noticed before any of us were born, As lenses became over-corrected say post WW2; many had a harsher out of focus effect; what detracts from a focus pull in a cine/movie scene.</p>

<p>One can make up all sorts of goof words to look like a newbie.</p>

<p>Go to where concrete is being floated; fine the oldest worker; make up new terms and tell him that he has never seen them before. It just makes you look like a greenhorn; cocky know it all.</p>

<p>50 years ago in cine work it was well know that the some of the 1950's super fast lenses had a poorer out of focus look than others. The really nothing new at all. Folks did not need a BS term then. You might as well make up a new word for a hula hoop; or battery corrosion on a flashlight; or just notice that cars have alternators.</p>

<p>Bokeh is like if somebody from Key West moves to Canada and discovers; snow. They can make up new names' and "discover" what folks noticed 10,000 + years ago. Usage of the B word just means folks are poor observers; or cater to new buzzwords for eons old stuff.</p>

<p>Folks who have shot for 40 years and cannot tell poor versus great out of focus areas probably would not notice if their wife dyed her hair day glow orange; or if a image has clutter like cigar ashes; or if folks eyes are closed; it points to not being aware.</p>

<p>The comical thing is that the folks who coined the B word are from the country that produced the worse lenses for out of focus looks. They sweated 2D lens test chart data; and ignored the old masters total concern; shooting actual images.</p>

<p>It is like if they chased a spec to make a better violin; by ignored the subtle things that make a tool great.</p>

<p>****One is had pressed to find a pre WW2 lens with a poor out of focus look; the masters actually shot real images too; besides just tracing rays for 5 to 10 years.</p>

<p>In movie work; I tested a bunch of lenses for 16mm for out of focus effects back in the 1960's; it was not anything new then.</p>

<p>In a focus pull in a movie; the director wants the pull from actor A to actor B; with the least distraction of crappy out of focus stuff. A poor lenses means the crap competes with the actors; a total moron can seen this. This was understood eons ago; one reduced lighting to reduce the distractions.</p>

<p>"distractions" are not as noticeable to still folks because they are less aware.</p>

<p>It is probably safe to say that in movie work folks are more aware; the burn rate is MASSIVE in film and crew costs; many many thousands of bucks per hour.</p>

<p>In much still image work; folks are less aware. Less folks notice "stuff"; ie clutter; the subtle things.</p>

<p>Using a lens with a better out of focus look in movies often involves an older lens; not corrected overly; one that has a pleasing look with 3D images.<br>

<br /> ***ALOT*** of stuff from the Pre Ww2 era is like this; ie microphones; audio amps; speakers; muscial instruments.</p>

<p>Many folks will never "get this"; the C student (microphone, lens, etc) is better than their beloved A student that is tested around narrow specs they worship.</p>

<p>Folks have been taking images of 3D objects since the beginning of photography. It really has only been since post WW2 that this overcorrected lenses came out; that often have a poorer/harsher out of focus look.</p>

<p>Since it took still chaps 40 to 50 years to "discover" out of focus looks; maybe still folks will "discover" lighting too? :) :)</p>

<p>It was well known to use a poorer lens 40 to 50 years ago to create discord in the out of focus areas in a film. The bad guy lurking in the background was in the miss mash of crummy out of focus effects.<br>

This was taught the UCLA film stuff in the 1960's; but some still folks today cannot see it; nor the woman's day glow orange Afro with day glow pink hot pants.</p>

<p>Each one of us has different talents. Some folks cannot tell a Nikon F from a F2; or a Zorki from a Leica.</p>

<p>Help us, Obi-Mike Johnston; you're our only hope.</p>