I don’t give a damn about bokeh quality.

[Okapi001]

Exactly. A blur is a blur. 30, 40 years ago I read hundreds of lens reviews in various photo magazines and not once was the "quality" of the blur or out of focus parts mentioned or discussed. A complete non-issue for me, too.

Even mirror lens' donuts were not regarded as something bad or ugly, just as a curious side effect of the technology.

To be honest, I'm going to put my foot down when it comes to mirror lens donuts. At that point, a blur not just a blur. It's a distraction that draws your eye to it, doing the exact opposite of what people are (generally) trying to do when they defocus the background.

It's purely subjective, and most probably influenced by what you have read or heard. For me it is no more distraction than cat's eyes, onion rings or just ordinary plain circles. It can sometimes even add a sort of a charm to the image.

 

[RobbieBear]

The most commonly used tools for imaging is iPhones. And as many/most of us know, Apple has added a portrait mode that digitally attempts to replicate short DOF. And rumours say that they will add 3-D sensing to the rear camera, which will improve results, and we are going to be flooded with images with digitally synthesized short DOF that actually looks OK, and will improve over time, probably eventually letting you dial in the DOF you want.

Which of course will lead to endless discussions about the superiority of real DOF vs. fake DOF.

I propose that if you want to successfully argue the case for dedicated camera hardware, you need to get away from the fringe concerns.

Now you are talking about actual depth of field here. This is entirely separate from the quality of the blur (bokeh)

Are you suggesting you don't care about controlling DOF? Because that would be just silly to my mind.

I do agree though, that in my film days, out of focus was just out of focus. I suppose discussions of the quality of it may have been part of how we felt a lens rendered as a whole, but I don't remember discussing it specifically.

Perhaps, as we become more demanding of our images, we start to drill down more into what makes one image appear better than another.

I do seem to notice the bokeh when I am watching TV nowadays. There is some beautiful cinematography and it does enhance the experience. For example, when a person is being filmed close up and you see the out of focus background, say cars and lights etc. Often find myself commenting on the shape of the specular highlights - much to the amusement of my other half who simply rolls her eyes!

So, I guess I do think that the quality of OOF elements (bokeh) has an impact on the viewer whether in video or stills.

 

[Jonas Palm]

Bokeh concerns the properties of the out of focus rendering.

If for instance you shoot a portrait, you might want to use a short depth of field to isolate and emphasize the subject. So the bokeh concerns the areas which the photographer has deemed distracts from the subject, it is not the subject itself. So if you find bokeh to be important it implies that you are studying the areas that the photographer had intended you not to, meaning that either

a, the photographer failed to achieve their goal, or

b, you’re weird.

It’s a bit like listening to a live recording of music and only paying attention to scrapes and coughs.

The people I’ve listened to that talk about their portrait photography discuss lighting, more lighting, posing the subject and establishing a connection, lighting, controlling the background, the merits and problems of environmental context in portraiture, and so on. Bokeh? Never once.

 

[Jonas Palm]

The most commonly used tools for imaging is iPhones. And as many/most of us know, Apple has added a portrait mode that digitally attempts to replicate short DOF. And rumours say that they will add 3-D sensing to the rear camera, which will improve results, and we are going to be flooded with images with digitally synthesized short DOF that actually looks OK, and will improve over time, probably eventually letting you dial in the DOF you want.

Which of course will lead to endless discussions about the superiority of real DOF vs. fake DOF.

I propose that if you want to successfully argue the case for dedicated camera hardware, you need to get away from the fringe concerns.

Now you are talking about actual depth of field here. This is entirely separate from the quality of the blur (bokeh)

Are you suggesting you don't care about controlling DOF? Because that would be just silly to my mind.

I do agree though, that in my film days, out of focus was just out of focus. I suppose discussions of the quality of it may have been part of how we felt a lens rendered as a whole, but I don't remember discussing it specifically.

Perhaps, as we become more demanding of our images, we start to drill down more into what makes one image appear better than another.

I do seem to notice the bokeh when I am watching TV nowadays. There is some beautiful cinematography and it does enhance the experience. For example, when a person is being filmed close up and you see the out of focus background, say cars and lights etc. Often find myself commenting on the shape of the specular highlights - much to the amusement of my other half who simply rolls her eyes!

So, I guess I do think that the quality of OOF elements (bokeh) has an impact on the viewer whether in video or stills.

Nope, DOF is an important property! (Or I wouldn’t have messed with large format film to get access to good tilt capabilities).

Bokeh is something else - it concerns the areas that you want out of focus, that essentially, you’ve decided are unimportant or distracts from the actual subject. Which is why focussing on it’s properties implies that you’re focussing on something other than what the image is actually about.

 

[brianric]

Why advertise your lack of sophistication on a forum?

Glad that Coke bottle lenses are all you need.....the $ savings will be HUGE for you!

-J

As opposed to your snobbery.

 

[RobbieBear]

Would you be cool with that? I agree that it's mostly a photographer only thing but this particular shot was the first time a non-photographer ever mentioned anything about the bokeh (or in their words 'the weird background donuts').

And this is the reason people do care about bokeh.

 

[Velocity of Sound]

I started photography with a first- or second-generation cellphone camera - the type that had the "640x480 VGA" photos. I later upgraded to a point-and-shoot. DSLRs (and later, ILCs) offer a lot more over cameraphones and compacts than just depth of field control, but shallow DoF and bokeh are the most outward-facing aspects that people will notice.

I will readily admit that my reliance on bokeh is partly for selfish reasons, because I like those scenes in which there's not enough context to see all of the details for yourself, yet just enough context to paint the scene in your mind. The other aspect is that it's easier to rely on a shallow DoF and pretty bokeh than to utilize lighting effectively, and compose effectively. Just get a somewhat interesting background (or at least, something with interesting colors), get a shallow enough DoF, and the picture becomes somewhat artistic and pleasing to the eye:

Olympus E-520 with Leica D Summilux 25mm f/1.4 at f/1.4 and ISO 100. In hindsight, the light post is a composition error... but if I could have had an even shallower DoF and blown it away, it probably wouldn't be!

The other aspect, as you said in your original post, is in how we're using photos these days. Printed large, smatterings of out-of-focus areas are practically a waste, and look ridiculous. But when resized to view on a small computer screen (or even smaller, on a smartphone screen), it looks (subjectively) nice.

Olympus E-P1 with Pentax SMC-M 50mm f/1.4 at ISO 2500 and f/1.4. My post-processing abilities are much better now than then, and I could probably make this photo a lot better if I re-processed it.

Bokeh is all the rage these days, which probably reflects the modern ways in which we view photos, as well as the desire to have technology make things easier for us. A shallow DoF and pretty bokeh is a quick and easy way to make a photo artistic and fancy-looking. Perhaps some day I'll become skilled enough with lighting and composition that I will join you in saying that I no longer care about it, but I suspect I'll end up buying a "full frame" or medium format camera to sate my artistic desires before that happens, unfortunately!

 

[RobbieBear]

The most commonly used tools for imaging is iPhones. And as many/most of us know, Apple has added a portrait mode that digitally attempts to replicate short DOF. And rumours say that they will add 3-D sensing to the rear camera, which will improve results, and we are going to be flooded with images with digitally synthesized short DOF that actually looks OK, and will improve over time, probably eventually letting you dial in the DOF you want.

Which of course will lead to endless discussions about the superiority of real DOF vs. fake DOF.

I propose that if you want to successfully argue the case for dedicated camera hardware, you need to get away from the fringe concerns.

Now you are talking about actual depth of field here. This is entirely separate from the quality of the blur (bokeh)

Are you suggesting you don't care about controlling DOF? Because that would be just silly to my mind.

I do agree though, that in my film days, out of focus was just out of focus. I suppose discussions of the quality of it may have been part of how we felt a lens rendered as a whole, but I don't remember discussing it specifically.

Perhaps, as we become more demanding of our images, we start to drill down more into what makes one image appear better than another.

I do seem to notice the bokeh when I am watching TV nowadays. There is some beautiful cinematography and it does enhance the experience. For example, when a person is being filmed close up and you see the out of focus background, say cars and lights etc. Often find myself commenting on the shape of the specular highlights - much to the amusement of my other half who simply rolls her eyes!

So, I guess I do think that the quality of OOF elements (bokeh) has an impact on the viewer whether in video or stills.

Nope, DOF is an important property! (Or I wouldn’t have messed with large format film to get access to good tilt capabilities).

Bokeh is something else - it concerns the areas that you want out of focus, that essentially, you’ve decided are unimportant or distracts from the actual subject. Which is why focussing on it’s properties implies that you’re focussing on something other than what the image is actually about.

I disagree. The image is not just the subject that the photographer wants us to focus on but the whole image. If the background is very swirly or 'nervous' it can draw the eye and distract the viewer from an appreciation of the main subject of the photo.

 

[Loga]

Why advertise your lack of sophistication on a forum?

Glad that Coke bottle lenses are all you need.....the $ savings will be HUGE for you!

He didn't say that he didn't care about resolving power, or chromatic aberrations, or corrections for coma, or astigmatism, or distortion.

He didn't even say that he didn't care about the amount of background blur that he could produce.

All he said was that he never found a situation where an otherwise good shot was let down by poor bokeh characteristics.

And you could say that for a lot of (in fact, almost all) technical aspects too, like sharpness, color accuracy, noise etc etc. Still, we discuss about them here a lot. Well, this forum is intended to do that.

There's a million miles between that statement and the Coke bottle lenses you've somehow jumped onto.

I also find the original post pointless. Maybe jalywol tried to emphasize the same.

 

[eques]

and wish I had this lens:

Loading…

forum.mflenses.com

Peter

 

[addlightness]

[No message]

 

[Arek Halusko]

Would you be cool with that? I agree that it's mostly a photographer only thing but this particular shot was the first time a non-photographer ever mentioned anything about the bokeh (or in their words 'the weird background donuts').

To me that just look like atmospheric disturbance from the heat coming off the asphalt.

Would people care about bokeh if they were never told about it? I never even think about it anymore, it was one of those things when you first hear about out and it starts to distract you from looking at the whole image.

 

[tko]

People who don't care about something passionately are usually the ones who don't have it and can't get it.

There. I said it.

PS-it would help if you posted some of your photos. You know, so we can see what you do care about.

--
no, I won't return to read your witty reply!
professional cynic and contrarian: don't take it personally
http://500px.com/omearak

 

[RobbieBear]

Would you be cool with that? I agree that it's mostly a photographer only thing but this particular shot was the first time a non-photographer ever mentioned anything about the bokeh (or in their words 'the weird background donuts').

Despite being out of focus, the background distracts the eye from the main subject.



Whereas, i feel that, in my photo below the OOF background draws the eye to the main subject, giving it environmental context, without being a distraction.

 

[northlondon43]

I don't give a damn if anyone else care about Bokeh quality or not. I do.

Good for you. But...er...why?

He did not ask you why you did not care.

So what? Does that mean we cannot ask more questions?

Of course you can, but it does seem rather unlikely to get an answer as they said they did not give a damn.

And there is an obvious contradiction in the OP right here. If they did not give a damn, why would they want to know the reason of the damned thing? Just does not add up.

 

[mostlyboringphotog]

and wish I had this lens:

http://forum.mflenses.com/viewtopic.php?t=78265

Peter

Just for a pleasant conversation - if one could put the similar background via photo shop, would you feel differently?

 

[northlondon43]

Why advertise your lack of sophistication on a forum?

Glad that Coke bottle lenses are all you need.....the $ savings will be HUGE for you!

-J

Oooh darling... your sarcasm is sooooooo unsophisticated

 

[Tim Reidy Productions]

bokeh is an artistic effect that ususlly does not occur in the real world.

if you do not shoot for the out of focus you wont need it.

 

[yellodog]

Exactly. A blur is a blur. 30, 40 years ago I read hundreds of lens reviews in various photo magazines and not once was the "quality" of the blur or out of focus parts mentioned or discussed. A complete non-issue for me, too.

Even mirror lens' donuts were not regarded as something bad or ugly, just as a curious side effect of the technology.

I remember different. Mirror lens donuts were definitely a fly in the ointment and a reason they never really took of.

 

[Sam in Hawaii]

OP, now look at what you've done! Bookeh "discussions" are the photography forum equivalent of oil threads on car fora. Everybody has an opinion...