How long has "bokeh" been around?

[Landrum Kelly]

I'm talking about the word, not the phenomenon. I see that it has

finally made at least one on-line dictionary:

 

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=bokeh

 

I've been seeing the word on this site for years, and I understand

that it came from the Japanese, but I was wondering if anyone knows

anything else about the origin of this term. I have the 1991

version of the Oxford-English dictionary, which is supposed to

contain every English word, of whatever origin. It is not in that

version, and so I assume that its passing into the common vernacular

is a relatively recent phenomenon. Really good dictionaries show

when a word was first discovered in print, as well as the etymology

of the word. Does anyone have any clue from their own dictionaries?

 

I post the question here since it seems that the Leica folks would

be as likely as anyone else to know the answer, since it comes up in

discussions of lens quality. In any case, I am a bit relieved to

see it cited in at least one popular dictionary--and with the

spelling that most of us have become accustomed to. It is a useful

term referring to a useful concept.

 

If you have an up-to-date dictionary, please let me know what you

find, if anything.

 

--Lannie

[Landrum Kelly]

I see now that Mike Johnston claims to have coined the current English spelling:

 

http://www.photo.net/mjohnston/column49/

 

I would still like to know what anyone else finds.

 

--Lannie

[skip_converse]

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/bokeh.htm

Lannie:

I found the above web site helpful in explaining bokeh. Hope this helps. I found no such animal on AOL's on-line dictionary.

 

Warm regards,

Glen

Tuxedo Park NY

[leslie_cheung]

Probably invented/fabricated by some leica user to inflate his dwindling gear value when the nikon F came out:)

[Landrum Kelly]

Leslie, Nikon users are also asking which Nikkors give the best bokeh, and it is generally acknowledged that some lenses do give better bokeh than others, although these continue to be subjective evaluations. I was hoping to avoid the brand wars on this one.

 

--Lannie

[Landrum Kelly]

Here is one where I blew the foreground focus but liked the bokeh. I'm not sure why. (This one was shot with a Canon 50mm f/1.8, as I recall, for what that is worth.)

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/4070464

 

I am assuming that it is not always simply lens quality that comes into play, but the aperture selected, among other possible optical variables.

 

--Lannie

[leslie_cheung]

I like them both very much...not trying to flame any brand:)

[kelly_flanigan1]

The B word is a newbie term for out of focus effects on lenses; which goes back many centuries. You can coin new terms for snow; rain; your toes, all stuff that cave men understood.

[Uhooru]

I thought it was a Japanese word/invention where they attempted to marry abstract concepts

of beauty with what most people called out of focus areas or blurred backgrounds/

forgrounds, etc.

[fjords]

Barry, do shunga manuels come with that marriage?

[jtdnyc]

I can distinctly remember reading the article in Photo Techniques in 1997 in which, according to Mike Johnston, the word was first published in English.

 

It sticks in my mind because I had been aware of the concept from my own examination of photos, especially old ones, but I had never seen the matter addressed in writing. The article made me feel that someone was finally articulating what I had been observing and thinking about.

 

I accept Kelly's point that the concept is much older than the word, but I'm thankful that someone played Adam and assigned a name to it, thereby making it so much easier to discuss -- endlessly, so it seems. But, again like Kelly, I think it's a mistake to think of it as originally, exclusively or even primarily a Japanese concept when it has apparently been important to generations of Hollywood cameramen -- even if they didn't have a word for it.

[Landrum Kelly]

Thanks, guys. Yes, I started to make the distinction at the outset between the concept and the term, especially in its present incarnation with the "h" on the end. (Apparently it was around as "boke" before that, according to Johnston, although I cannot trace that spelling to a dictionary.)

 

I am a better wordsmith than photographer, but the good thing about analyzing words is that it does direct us back to the concept. I suspect that a lot of good photographers have indeed long thought about this concept, as some of you have noted. When I first read about it here on PN a few years back, it hit me afresh as something to pay attention to.

 

Now I rarely shoot without thinking about what the background is going to look like.

 

--Lannie

[del_gray]

Have you seen this recent additional explanation by Mike Johnston?

 

http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com/2006/01/bokehwhat-it-is.html

[mike-images]

This may be so tangential that it is of no relevance but...my recollection is that bokeh is a farsi word for a particular pattern in persian carpets. I think it is the pattern like a fish that you see in paisley patterns.

 

Tangentially

Mike

[mike-images]

Brain must be addled the farsi word is boteh - one letter different.

 

Mike

[Landrum Kelly]

Thanks, Del. This gets more and more interesting in terms of the history of a word (not the concept, although the two will likely go hand in glove from here on out as the word gains even more currency). Here is another link from that same article by Johnston:

 

http://www.vanwalree.com/optics/bokeh.html

 

Mike, that is an interesting point--presumably the similarity of the Japanese word and the Farsi word is a linguistic coincidence, but one never knows. If it is not a coincidence, then perhaps one language has fairly recently borrowed from the other through trade. (I would guess that it is coincidence in this case.)

 

It would appear that Mike Johnston's adding the "h" has been helpful not only in approximating the Japanese pronunciation, but in standardizing useage of the transliterated English word. I think that photography is the richer for having a word with a more and more precise meaning.

 

Thanks to all who have helped on this. I think that we shall be finding the word in more and more dictionaries as it makes its way into standard English--not merely a technical term used by a comparatively few persons in photography, but a more general photographic term understood by more and more persons.

 

I tried a neologism ("militerrorism") in one of my own book titles, but it has not stuck in the same way that Mike Johnston's creation (a la spelling) seems to have done.

 

--Lannie

[johnny massey]

There has been a fascinating series on UK tv recently called 'Balderdash and Piffle' where the researchers have been trying to include new words or re-date existing ones in the Oxford English Dictionary. The main problem is, indeed, finding the earliest occurrence of the word in print. Anyway, you might like to check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/wordhunt/ - it's your baby Landrum, perhaps you'd like to suggest a new b-word for the next series . . .

[h._p.]

The term may be new but people were talking about out of focus rendition at least as early as the 'fifties. I've got some old magazines at home which contain an article and readers letters on the subject. From memory, at least one of the letters mentions an earlier discussion on the subject from the inter-war years.

[vivek iyer]

It is even lot earlier than that. It is an age old thing muddled by the popular Brownies and the like.

[terry_rory]

I read a 1930s book on miniature photography (35mm and 6x6) where it was explained how to avoid a blurry background in portraits by standing further back from the subject and selecting a smaller aperture. The author did not approve of blur.

 

A colleague was looking at some of my pics online and commented that he did not like the blurred backgrounds as it made his eyes "go all weird". He prefers photos where everything is sharp. I have known this response from others. (Mind you I also know someone who actually gets really angry about the use of B&W in pictures and refuses to watch ANY B&W film on TV! It takes all sorts.)

[del_gray]

Landrum, now I am interested in what you are doing (having some language and linguistic background myself). What books have you written? Are they all linguistic? Scholarly or popular? 'Fess up!

[jonathan_reynolds]

I've yet to see any decent side-by-side comparison of the same subject, same film, same aperture, different lens. I strongly suspect that the role of the lens in OOF effects is minor compared with (1) the type of background and (2) the aperture used. I get both pleasant and unpleasant OOF effects but I only have one lens! I blame myself when things look ugly.

[jake_tauber]

You are all mistaken.

 

Bokeh is derived from the Japanese saying for, "let�s get some extra Yen from the Gaijin who want to buy our faulty optics". After the WWII, Leica executives, knowing a good deal when they saw it, raised their prices and incorporated this flaw into their lenses knowing that someday there would be a group of photographers on the Internet who would pay extra so they might have something to discuss other than what material they should use to re-cover their cameras. :-D

[buttons_de_ridder]

Ever since Photography Fori were invented ....

[joseph_wisniewski]

The concept has always been around. I remember my highschool art teacher using the rather pretentious term "the quality of the out of focus areas" and making a big thing about Tessars vs. double Gauss (we did learn on 35mm cameras).

 

And those ads for mirror teles where they talked about the out of focus "donuts" as if it were a "good thing".