The definition of "bokeh"

[Donald B]

Can any one of the 27 voters that reckon it means beautiful post a link to a photo they have commented on and just used the word bokeh without saying beautiful or good or smooth ?

Cheers don

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[Max Iso]

Can any one of the 27 voters that reckon it means beautiful post a link to a photo they have commented on and just used the word bokeh without saying beautiful or good or smooth ?

Cheers don

They will squirm for as long as they can without answering no. In the end, nobody says "that photo has bokeh". In reality, as somebody else mentioned, bokeh is in reference to the effect of blurring the BG/FG, whether it's good or bad is subjective and doesn't change the fact we use the word bokeh.

In the end, we still need descriptive terms used in conjunction otherwise it doesn't say much.

--
"It's strange, whenever I see a gun
I think about just how petty you are
And it blows my [insert] mind!
Yeah, it blows my [insert] mind!
These days, I never seem to get enough
I’m tired of this [beep], I want to go home
Don't waste my [insert] time!
Don't waste my [insert] time!
Because anything exceptional
Gets crushed by common people
With jealousy and ignorance
And all their common evils
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Collections made of clay
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-Custer

 

[Great Bustard]

English is, of course, a dynamic language. We are seeing, for example, that "exposure" is typically used to describe the brightness of the photo, and it's all but a done deal that the term "aperture" is used to mean the relative aperture of the lens.

I agree. This is why I find it very important to try and understand what people really mean instead of sticking to the exact definitions...

It's just that it's somewhat easier to understand what people mean if they use the words to mean what the words mean. Then again, I suppose if even the meaning of a word like "is" can be quibbled over, well... ;-)

...otherwise even a simple activity such as blowjob for example, would end up with a big disappointment.

There's a story I should probably not tell about exactly that. :-D

 

[Ian Stuart Forsyth]

Can any one of the 27 voters that reckon it means beautiful

As one of the 27 voters I don't reckon it means beautiful, it is the quality good or bad nothing else

post a link to a photo they have commented on and just used the word bokeh without saying beautiful or good or smooth ?

Cheers don

 

[MediaArchivist]

Can any one of the 27 voters that reckon it means beautiful post a link to a photo they have commented on and just used the word bokeh without saying beautiful or good or smooth ?

You might be referring to a different poll, none of the options used the word "beautiful".

Here's a post I made a few weeks ago: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/58629879

I used the word bokeh by itself to describe the aesthetics of the blurred areas in the OP's photos then used it again with a negative descriptor ("poor"). I don't know why such a prior comment's existence matters for this discussion but I hope it satisfies your curiosity.

 

[Gerry Winterbourne]

The problem with the technical definition is to convey meaning, one still has to use an adjective with the word. Can you simply say a lens has bokeh?

Of course. All lenses have bokeh (properly used), just as all lenses have contrast.

Well, there's another problem with this linguistic debate. If bokeh is the quality of blur (which is GB's proposition to which I'm presuming you subscribe) then no lens has it.

The lens creates the blur and the blur has a quality that is called bokeh; but that's not the same as the lens having bokeh.

Of course it is, or the lens couldn't produce it. If a lens produces good bokeh, it has good bokeh;

That's exactly the confusion that GB's thread is trying to dispel. Producing and having are distinctly different and are emphatically not synonyms.

Plants contain chlorophyll; chlorophyll produces oxygen (as a by-product, but it produces it); that production (light blur produced by a lens) depends on light; but to say that plants "have" oxygen is plainly ridiculous.

i.e., it is a property of the lens that it creates pleasant OOF elements. If it produces bad bokeh, it has bad bokeh. But it has bokeh – the quality it lends to its OOF elements – no matter what. That bokeh didn't come from nowhere; it came from the lens, and it couldn't come from the lens unless the lens has it.

Same argument, really - "oxygen came from plants and couldn't come from the plant unless the plant had it". But neither lens nor plant "have" it, they produce it.

 

[Joe Pineapples II]

When did its use in English become common when talking about selective focus / narrow DoF? Was it after Moriyama / Provoke Magazine and are-bure-boke?

Joe

 

[Great Bustard]

When did its use in English become common when talking about selective focus / narrow DoF? Was it after Moriyama / Provoke Magazine and are-bure-boke?

しだない. I was going to guess around the same time people starting thinking that Trump would be the best choice for President, as that use of the term seems more than a little apt in that context, but I think it was before that. ;-)

 

[Dutch Newchurch]

Isn't it a marketing phrase to persuade the punter that the lens that costs twice as much has mysterious properties to make it so much better than the cheaper lens that otherwise has the same specification?

However, that's not to say that marketers don't do what marketers do.

Or am I being unduly cynical?

Is that even possible? ;-)

I didn't encounter the word until about ten years ago (and I'd then been using cameras and reading about photography extensively for over 25 years).

Yes -- it's a relatively recent term:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh#Origin

The term comes from the Japanese word boke (暈け or ボケ), which means "blur" or "haze", or boke-aji (ボケ味), the "blur quality". The Japanese term boke is also used in the sense of a mental haze or senility. The term bokashi (暈かし) is related, meaning intentional blurring or gradation.

The English spelling bokeh was popularized in 1997 in Photo Techniques magazine, when Mike Johnston, the editor at the time, commissioned three papers on the topic for the March/April 1997 issue; he altered the spelling to suggest the correct pronunciation to English speakers, saying "it is properly pronounced with bo as in bone and ke as in Kenneth, with equal stress on either syllable". The spellings bokeh and boke have both been in use since at least 1996, when Merklinger had suggested "or Bokeh if you prefer." The term bokeh has appeared in photography books as early as 1998. It is sometimes pronounced /ˈboʊkə/ (boke-uh).

Thank you. That accords with my experience.

I have to say that I don't find it a particularly useful concept in my own photography.

 

[Donald B]

Can any one of the 27 voters that reckon it means beautiful post a link to a photo they have commented on and just used the word bokeh without saying beautiful or good or smooth ?

You might be referring to a different poll, none of the options used the word "beautiful".

Here's a post I made a few weeks ago: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/58629879

I used the word bokeh by itself to describe the aesthetics of the blurred areas in the OP's photos then used it again with a negative descriptor ("poor"). I don't know why such a prior comment's existence matters for this discussion but I hope it satisfies your curiosity.

 

[Joe Pineapples II]

When did its use in English become common when talking about selective focus / narrow DoF? Was it after Moriyama / Provoke Magazine and are-bure-boke?

しだない. I was going to guess around the same time people starting thinking that Trump would be the best choice for President, as that use of the term seems more than a little apt in that context, but I think it was before that. ;-)

I don't know either. In fact, there is much I don't know; but I have approximate knowledge of many things... like... this imported Czech beer is the cat's whiskers.

Cheers

Joe

 

[CQui]

Is there really a debate on the definition of "exposure"?

Did I miss some lenghtly discussion with happy fights and name calling?

I fail to understand how a lens can have more or less bokeh than an other, I thought the quantity of bockeh depend onlu on the adjustment and the framing. Another photograph trying to blame the hardware?

 

[Donald B]

Can any one of the 27 voters that reckon it means beautiful

As one of the 27 voters I don't reckon it means beautiful, it is the quality good or bad nothing else

post a link to a photo they have commented on and just used the word bokeh without saying beautiful or good or smooth ?

Cheers don

 

[jooyoonchung]

Words can have a technical use and a lay use. Can we not just accept this situation as an example of that? Good grief.

 

[Chikubi]

In the conversation I had with the old Japanese man, definitely meant the quality of the blur （"カノンの７０－２００のぼけがすごいきれです") or something to that effect. But, like I said, it was just that one conversation with that one old man.

Yup, that's believable. In another vein, the article I mentioned earlier starts, "See that photo there? It has boke. See this photo here? It has boke. Everybody loves boke. Did you know that even in English boke is called Bokeh?". They're just talking about blur itself and nothing more. Both your's and my examples are very typical Japanese usage.

 

[gollywop]

You left out the most common usage: the blur itself. I provided dozens of examples in the other thread from the major manufacturers. Here is another one, from a unspoiled player, Apple:

Portrait mode automatically creates a depth-of-field effect that keeps faces sharp while creating a beautifully blurred background. This effect, also known as bokeh, was previously reserved for DSLR cameras.

According to them, bokeh is the effect, not the quality of it.

Nope...not the effect. They said "beautifully" blurred background. Thus, the effect to which they refer for Bokeh is beautiful blurred....thus quality.

The phrase "This effect, also known as bokeh" too complex for you to comprehend?

The combination of phrases: "beautifully blurred background. This effect, also known as bokeh . .", which makes it clear that the effect called bokeh that they are talking about is a beautifully blurred background, is too complex for you to comprehend?

And...you failed again.

You are acting as a donkey hole as usual. Trying to compensate lack of comprehension with rudeness.

Davinator is correct, you did fail again. And if there is any rudeness, it must have infected you.

And those examples you gave did not support your point, they contradicted it.

 

[The Davinator]

You left out the most common usage: the blur itself. I provided dozens of examples in the other thread from the major manufacturers. Here is another one, from a unspoiled player, Apple:

Portrait mode automatically creates a depth-of-field effect that keeps faces sharp while creating a beautifully blurred background. This effect, also known as bokeh, was previously reserved for DSLR cameras.

According to them, bokeh is the effect, not the quality of it.

Nope...not the effect. They said "beautifully" blurred background. Thus, the effect to which they refer for Bokeh is beautiful blurred....thus quality.

The phrase "This effect, also known as bokeh" too complex for you to comprehend?

The combination of phrases: "beautifully blurred background. This effect, also known as bokeh . .", which makes it clear that the effect called bokeh that they are talking about is a beautifully blurred background, is too complex for you to comprehend?

And...you failed again.

You are acting as a donkey hole as usual. Trying to compensate lack of comprehension with rudeness.

Davinator is correct, you did fail again. And if there is any rudeness, it must have infected you.

And those examples you gave did not support your point, they contradicted it.

 

[peripheralfocus]

When did its use in English become common when talking about selective focus / narrow DoF? Was it after Moriyama / Provoke Magazine and are-bure-boke?

Joe

The Wikipedia entry on bokeh that Great Bustard has quoted further up in the thread tells the story. In 1997, Photo Techniques magazine published a three-article series on the term, the concept, and the way that Japanese photographers used and talked about it. (There is no real debate about how the Japanese use the term -- to them it means "defocus blur", not "quality of defocus blur". They use a different term, boke-aji, to denote quality of blur.)

Nobody that I'm aware of, including Wikipedia's contributors/researchers, has been able to find any prior English-language use of the term in the photographic context. In a thread similar to this one a year ago, I did my own archive search of Google Books and Lexis-Nexis.

The earliest use in English that I could find is from Lexis-Nexis (which is, if you don't know, the gold standard of periodical indexing services and includes content from thousands of magazines and newspapers going back to the 1800s). The word "bokeh" appears in a Washington Post article written in 1990, but it's used in a sociological context, not photographic, and it refers to the "senility" or "mental blur" sense of the Japanese word.

After the Photo Techniques articles in 1997, the word began to appear frequently in English-language photography publications and online forums -- by the early 2000s, it was widely used.

It entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2003 -- and they defined it as "quality of blur" at the time.

 

[gollywop]

You left out the most common usage: the blur itself. I provided dozens of examples in the other thread from the major manufacturers. Here is another one, from a unspoiled player, Apple:

Portrait mode automatically creates a depth-of-field effect that keeps faces sharp while creating a beautifully blurred background. This effect, also known as bokeh, was previously reserved for DSLR cameras.

According to them, bokeh is the effect, not the quality of it.

Nope...not the effect. They said "beautifully" blurred background. Thus, the effect to which they refer for Bokeh is beautiful blurred....thus quality.

The phrase "This effect, also known as bokeh" too complex for you to comprehend?

The combination of phrases: "beautifully blurred background. This effect, also known as bokeh . .", which makes it clear that the effect called bokeh that they are talking about is a beautifully blurred background, is too complex for you to comprehend?

And...you failed again.

You are acting as a donkey hole as usual. Trying to compensate lack of comprehension with rudeness.

Davinator is correct, you did fail again. And if there is any rudeness, it must have infected you.

And those examples you gave did not support your point, they contradicted it.

 

[David Pavlich]

Words can have a technical use and a lay use. Can we not just accept this situation as an example of that? Good grief.