Definition of bokeh, simply gibberish?

[guitarjeff]

It's been a hoot. We'll take it up tomorrow I'm sure.

Bokeh, what a cool word, coolest word in photography. Why, we can't have such a cool word only mean boring old blur. I know, we can at least cloud up the issue cause we could say something like "it is the quality of the blur". That way it sounds esoteric, mystical, and if someone calls us on the silly statement, we will just say, we meant the entirety of the quality of blur, meaning we are saying truth that its just blur. But saying as "it is the quality of the blur" at least clouds it up se we can still make it seem like it's something other than blur, uh, even though the word means BLUR in Japanese.

What a great word.

Night guys, thanks for participating.

 

[guitarjeff]

Good quality bokeh is simply a reflection of good quality aperture blades and well designed glass. Poorly finished aperture blades will give poor bokeh. The out of focus areas you see in a photograph are are actually representations of the aperture since a lens can only focus on a single plane in space. Focus of anything in front or behind this plane is controlled by the aperture blades. Hence, good quality blades = good bokeh, bad quality blades = bad bokeh. It's not subjective, it's simple physics. There's no opinions or arguments, only facts, bokeh is a physical thing. You are actually seeing the "quality" of the aperture of the lens in the out of focus areas.

Change all the words bokeh to blur in oof areas, still the same statement. I agree with everything you said. Well, not all. People could very well like the cheaper aperture blades, the may like busy bokeh. In music, many folks like cheap modeling amps and say they like the sound better than expensive tube amps. Taste is subjective. You can say more and better blades make for smoother, or rounder, or whatever, but not better in a concrete way because some may disagree.

 

[jtra]

Good quality bokeh is simply a reflection of good quality aperture blades and well designed glass. Poorly finished aperture blades will give poor bokeh. The out of focus areas you see in a photograph are are actually representations of the aperture since a lens can only focus on a single plane in space. Focus of anything in front or behind this plane is controlled by the aperture blades. Hence, good quality blades = good bokeh, bad quality blades = bad bokeh. It's not subjective, it's simple physics. There's no opinions or arguments, only facts, bokeh is a physical thing. You are actually seeing the "quality" of the aperture of the lens in the out of focus areas.

That can be disproved quickly. Consider that lenses of same aperture and fl have different bokeh wide open where no aperture blades are involved.
Go here: http://jtra.cz/stuff/essays/bokeh/index.html

 

[Matthew Miller]

I'm going to cut out most of your reply because you continue to not listen and are treating the premise of the metaphor I gave as some sort of gotcha when it was supposed to be the setup, so you missed the point. Rather than arguing about that, here is an answer to a question you insist on.

I'll ask again, Define what bokeh is using definable aspects it has that CANNOT also be aspects of blur.

You are not going to like this, because here the premise *you* give here has a flaw. But here we go:

Bokeh is a subset of the aspects of out of focus blur. Because it is a subset, all aspects of bokeh are also aspects of out of focus blur. However, it is not equivalent, because there are other aspects of out of focus blur which are not part of bokeh. Particularly, the quantity of out of focus blur is not included. Likewise, whether it is foreground or background blur is not. However, the aesthetic qualities are. That's the definition, and it's a useful distinction to make.

You want to take way the distinction and redefine the subset to be the superset, for reasons which aren't quite clear.

Do we need a special word for that subset? Possibly not, but we have one, and many people understand it.

If you are claiming that bokeh is something more than blur in the real world, YOU MUST BE ABLE say something about that difference that CANNOT be in the definition of blur, can you not understand this obvious concept?

Well, because it is wrong.

ANYTHING you tell me about bokeh, I CAN USE IN A DESCRIPTION OF THE POSSIBLE QUALITIES of a photo with blur.

True. However, the converse is not true.

You say the bokeh has round circles, I say the BLUR has round circles, You say the bokeh is CHOPPY, I say that blur is choppy. The two words AND THE TWO THINGS ARE ONE AND THe SAME.

False, which I hope is clear to you now.

SHOW ME how you can describe or use the word BOKEH where I CANNOT change the word to blur and have the meaning be the same? Can you do this? i DARE YOU, do it. If you say "The bokeh has a beautiful smoothness to it". I can say "The blur has a beautiful smoothness to it. You say that bokeh has a unique angular aspect to it, I can say that blur has a unique angular aspect to it.

You can almost always use the word blur where one might say bokeh. However, you can't always say bokeh when you mean blur. Draw a Venn diagram if it helps.

Here's an example where you can't just drop in "blur", though: "I'm deciding between these lenses based on the bokeh." Why? Because you will get back an answer telling you to go for the one with the wider aperture, even though that isn't what you meant. You would need to qualify your statement — or you can just use the word that is already qualified.

You're welcome to argue about whether we need a word for this subset, but it's really silly to keep arguing that we don't have one.

 

[km25]

It is all in the iris, many blades good, few bad. Round blades good, square bad. Better then 5/6 blades rounded you get good bokei.