"Bokeh"

[twedten]

<p>I needed to vent this somewhere that maybe someone else will understand. What the heck is "bokeh"? The word looks retarded and sounds dumb. In 10 years of photography I had never heard this word. If you use this word, I immediately know you haven't a clue what you're talking about. I think you mean "DEPTH OF FIELD".</p>

<p>I know what people mean when they say it, I just think it's effin' stupid.</p>

[stp]

<p>It's the quality of the out-of-focus area behind the subject. Some lenses can render this smooth and creamy with no jarring highlights, while others may appear cluttered and distracting. As I understand it, the quality of bokeh is a function of lens design as well a shooting conditions (e.g., generally tending toward its best quality on a telephoto lens with a comparatively large aperture opening). Lenses generally acknowledged to have outstanding bokeh include the Canon 200mm f/2 and Canon 85mm f/1.2 at their maximum aperture.</p>

[twedten]

<p>All I'm saying is that pros don't use the work "bokeh". I understand that different lenses have different out-of-focus qualities. It's a word that Flickr made up, it seems. Usually it is used in the form of a question, "How do I get awesome bokeh?"</p>

<p>Thank you Stephen for the great explanation.</p>

[tjfuss]

<p>It's often neglected but the more subtle aspect of bokeh is not just in how the way-out-of-focus areas are rendered but it's the entire transition from sharp to out-of-focus... including the main subject. It's a valid consideration in choosing a lens. This particular professional does use the term (if only occasionally).</p>

[sarah_fox]

<blockquote>

<p>What the heck is "bokeh"? The word looks retarded and sounds dumb.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Well, in fact if you say it the wrong (or right?) way in Japan, it means "knucklehead." ;-)</p>

<p>FAIW, I'm a pro who uses the word "bokeh" if/when it's relevant to what I'm discussing. I don't consider myself stupid. The reason you perceive it as being a stupid word is that most people who use it have no idea what it really means.</p>

[wogears]

<p>Nate: You are soon to feel the wrath of the Bokian Insurgency! 'Bokeh', from the Japanese <em>boké </em>(blur) is IMO a somewhat pretentious word for--blur, or the quality thereof. The Cult of the Bokians was founded in 1992 (or 93) by Mike Johnston, <em>quondam</em> columnist at this site and elsewhere. The word is now so much misused--"Does the Canikon 80mm f1.5 have bokeh?"--that it is losing any meaning it may once have had. (Search dpreview.com for 'bokeh'.) "Awesome Bokeh" = "Smooth Blur". Since lens quality is only one component affecting blur in an image, the Bokian veneration of particular lenses is frequently carried to extremes. "Wow! Now that I have the Nokkoff 57mm f0.94, my banal snapshots of my cat have, like, AWESOME bokeh!"</p>

[tjfuss]

<p>I can't complain about the Bokians Les, my lens sales on fleabay have never been better!</p>

[sarah_fox]

<p>Also, "bokeh" is a term that has mostly been used by the motion picture industry until now. Cinematographers are keenly aware of the bokeh of the lenses they're using. Only the other day, I was watching a film in which the lens rendered the background lights in a night scene quite harshly around the edges, indicating overcorrection for spherical aberration. I thought that was quite an unusual lens choice and that a lens with a more neutral bokeh would have been a better choice. And then I re-thought. I realized that this sort of lens would render OOF areas closer than the plane of focus with a softer bokeh and hypothesized that there would soon be some important OOF elements introduced there. Sure enough, a conversation quickly surfaced, in which the nearest person was OOF with his back to the camera, rendered with "good" bokeh, the person who was talking was in focus and facing the camera, and the background lights were rendered with ordinarily "bad" bokeh. However, in balance, the whole thing made sense. I really enjoy reading the technical aspects apparent in cinematography. One can learn a lot about still photography from watching and analyzing a good movie. ;-)</p>

[richardsperry]

"I think you mean "DEPTH OF FIELD"."

 

Don't you really mean Shallowness of Field?

[Brad_]

>>> The word looks retarded and sounds dumb.

 

The use of the word "retarded" in that context is very insensitive.

[Matt Laur]

<p>It's not a bit different than saying "flare resistance" or "CA" or "contrastiness" ... it's a reference to how the lens performs a particular aspect of its job. Some people shoot in ways that make flare a continual problem (or creative opportunity). The way the lens is built means that it will (or won't) exhibit behavior in that area that does (or doesn't) contribute to the photographer's intended results. <br /><br />How the lens renders out-of-focus areas is no different. It's a real, tangible feature of the design, and it matters to some people, just like CA behavior or native lens color temp behavior matters. It also doesn't matter to other people, a single bit.<br /><br />I'll share the OP's frustration that a lot of newbies can't distinguish between the concepts of shallow DoF/selective focus and the aesthetic <em>qualities</em> thereof, as rendered by a given lens. But that doesn't make the word non-existent or meaningless, any more than "flare" is meaningless just because some uninformed people use it when they really mean "glare" or "blooming" or are referring to some other artifact.<br /><br />Your post is a rant, Nate, but about the wrong thing. You're complaining about an aspect of human behavior (using the wrong word for something, or having an un-nuanced understanding of a complex issue) that is scarcely peculiar to photography in general, let alone lens behavior in particular.<br /><br />You want a complaint about over-used, in-sufficiently nuanced photography terms? I'll vote for "make it pop," as used by millions of people who actually mean any one of (or some combination of) "good composition," "got it in focus," "didn't blow out the highlights," "abused it to death in post production," "made the baby's eyes the size of basketballs," "had a makeup artist actually do the work that matters," or perhaps even, "used selective focus with a good lens that made the background look pleasingly non-distracting."</p>

[john_macpherson]

<p>I agree with Brad.</p>

<p>FWIW here in Scotland the word <strong>'boak' </strong>is a Scottish slang term for 'to be sick' and <strong>'boaky'</strong> is the state of feeling on the verge of being sick, and <strong>'boaking'</strong> .....well I'm sure you get the picture. See <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=boak">here</a>. </p>

<p>I do have to say some images I've seen do have a particularly boaky quality.</p>

<p>Now you have that linguistic gem firmly lodged in your head I hope it does not affect you too much when you next decide to use bokeh.</p>

<p> </p>

[leslie_cheung]

<blockquote>

<p>It's a word that Flickr made up, it seems...</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Don't think so, but maybe flickr popularized it to the masses. "Bokeh" existed long before flickr started in '03, or was it '04? </p>

[mukul_dube]

<p>I do sometimes want to barf when people seek to impress other people by using words they don't understand. There was this chap who "loved the grain" in one of my photos on Flickr. It was an essentially grainless digital photo. Fellow evidently thought that grain was a Good Thing and that all good photos have it.</p>

<p>"Bokeh" is just a relatively new word for a phenomenon of which photographers have always been aware and have exploited. I had been using cameras for over forty years when I came across it.</p>

[Spearhead]

<p>The term appears to have first been used by Harold Merklinger in 1996.</p>

[twedten]

<blockquote>

<p>"Bokeh" is just a relatively new word for a phenomenon of which photographers have always been aware and have exploited. I had been using cameras for over forty years when I came across it.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Right. I just asked my client, who has been in business as long as I have been alive if he had heard of the word. No, but he certainly knows what it is when I describe it.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>You want a complaint about over-used, in-sufficiently nuanced photography terms?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You're right. I really just don't like the word, how it is used, and the type of questions people ask about it.</p>

<p>Sorry for my insensitivity. For some reason this really irks me. I'd change it now if I could.</p>

[JDMvW]

<blockquote>

<p>If you use this word, I immediately know you haven't a clue what you're talking about. I think you mean "DEPTH OF FIELD".<br>

I know what people mean when they say it, I just think it's effin' stupid.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>No, apparently <strong>you</strong> don't <em>know</em> what people mean when they say it. When you discuss it in these terms, it's clear you are the one who really doesn't get what it is about, as already demonstrated in this thread and your responses.<br>

Was your mother frightened by an out-of-focus highlight when you were in the womb?</p>

<p>;)</p>

[will_daniel1]

I'm kind of with Nate on this. I'm trying to imagine what it would have been like when I was in the industry in the 1970s: "Our bokeh is a helluva lot better than that #**&%* Minolta bokeh. Sometimes, though, the Leica bokeh just gives us a run for the money. You know, they spend all that R&D money on making the finest bokeh money can buy, but ours comes along sometimes and just blows the Leica guys away. Don't buy off-brand cameras like Sears, Vivitar, etc., because they don't know how to manufacture bokeh." Or going to a gallery: "Oh, what lovely bokeh in that photo!" It all sounds so silly to me.

[._kaa]

<p>Oh, boy :-D Such hostility to concepts that you don't know or don't understand...</p>

<p>Bokeh has a simple definition -- it's just the way out-of-focus areas, in particular, highlights, are rendered in a photograph. Using the word "bokeh" is easier than pronouncing "the look of out-of-focus highlights". You may or may not care about that, but there are certainly people who care very much.</p>

<p>Bokeh is mostly a function of the lens, specifically of the trade-offs that this particular lens made in trying to deal with inevitable aberrations. The spherical aberration is probably the most important one for bokeh. If you'd like a somewhat technical introduction, read http://toothwalker.org/optics/bokeh.html If you'd like a really technical treatment of the subject, I can dig out a paper by an optical scientist from Zeiss who goes into great details about how different lens produce different bokeh and what's involved in all of this.</p>

<p>But really, "I don't know what this word means so y'all are retarded because you use it" is, ahem, not a very good way of presenting yourself :-D</p>

[Dieter Schaefer]

<blockquote>

<p>No, apparently <strong>you</strong> don't <em>know</em> what people mean when they say it. When you discuss it in these terms, it's clear you are the one who really doesn't get what it is about, as already demonstrated in this thread and your responses.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Thanks, JDM - exactly to the point - .Kaa too. There are enough people on flickr (and elsewhere) who use the word "bokeh" without knowing a thing about it. It isn't all that hard to do a little research to educate oneself. Even if one thinks one knows what a word means - it never hurts to confirm - especially before posting a rant to show off one's knowledge and superiority (or lack thereof).</p>

[twedten]

<p>I know what it's supposed to mean. What I meant was that people use the word "bokeh" when they really mean high depth-of-field, having no intention of describing how the defocus of one lens compares to another, etc. Regardless, the word sounds silly. It rubs me the wrong way, like many people feel about the word "moist".</p>

<p>I am not trying to show off. I just don't like the word or how its used. My original post was harsh and was over-reactive, sorry about that. Good day...</p>

[ted262]

<p>Huh. First world problems, as they say.</p>

[wpahnelas]

<p>people in the general population don't know of care about bokeh. before i became interested in photography a few years ago, i'd never encountered the word. i can still remember the day i photographed something outdoors with a 50/1.8 lens wide open, and marveling at the peculiar, globe-shaped out-of-focus highlights. it was only some time later that i knew the common name for the phenomenon i'd encountered.<br>

nowadays, i know the difference between what's considered "harsh" bokeh, and what's said to be "pleasing," but i don't particularly obsess over it. thus, it's somewhat jarring when reading a forum post somewhere on PN, where a "noob" describes himself as "a lover of bokeh". they're common enough, i'm sure you've all seen them.<br>

with a bit of experience, it should become self-evident that the point of a photograph can never be "bokeh," though this is sometimes implied by some of its more ardent fans. one can only hope that this misconception is self-correcting as well. at some point, even the slowest to catch on will eventually realize those out-of-focus areas are out-of-focus for a reason.</p>

 

[richardsperry]

"when they really mean high depth-of-field"

 

What do you mean here?

 

High to me means a large amount of something. If I stack a million rice kernels high, it is very high. High speed, is a lot if speed. High Anxiety was a movie that gave me a lot of anxiety. If you are really high, you have smoked a lot of weed.

 

If you have a 'high depth of field', that means that you have a depth of field containing the foreground and infinity in focus

at the same time. Well, whatever, I guess.

 

Honestly, I think that lens makers should just make some lenses that provide decent background or foreground de-

focusing or blurring. Instead of relying on aperture size to pull it off. I tried the Nikon 105 DC, it just did not pull off what I wanted to do.

[mukul_dube]

<p>Richard, what does this aperture thing (you mean <em>aperature</em>, don't you?) have to do with height of depth of focus or with amount of bokeh?</p>