Bokeh
Bokeh (derived from Japanese boke ぼけ, a noun form of bokeru ぼける, “become blurred or fuzzy”) is a photographic term referring to the appearance of out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lens using a shallow depth of field.
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Bokeh (derived from Japanese boke ぼけ, a noun form of bokeru ぼける, “become blurred or fuzzy”) is a photographic term referring to the appearance of out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lens using a shallow depth of field.
Avi Flax
on 30 Oct 08I think this photo of mine, of a spider on a plant at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, is a decent example.
Nathan Youngman
on 30 Oct 08Seems Leica is always talking about the quality of their Bokeh.
Heard the term, didn’t know the etymology, yay for Wikipedia.
Darcy McGee
on 30 Oct 08I’d been shooting for over 20 years and never heard the term until about 3 years ago. It’s a term that’s been latched onto by the equipment obsessed geek-ification rise of digital photography.
Avoid it like the plague. Study depth of field instead, if you want to worry about out of focus areas. (Here’s a quiz: why do digital cameras typically have less depth of field, resulting in the loss of one of the major controls over the appearance of your photographs.)
draco
on 30 Oct 08I’m a fan of bokeh. Just love that fuzzy effects it brings whenever I see it.
Dave Sailer
on 30 Oct 08See what the inventor of the term is up to now at “The Online Photographer” ( http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html )
I read it every day. Mr. Johnston always has something interesting going on. Worth at least an occasional look. Many intelligent comments from sharp people.
Mike Johnston
on 30 Oct 08Thanks for the mention Dave.
There’s no reason to be “for or against” bokeh—it merely means blur, but of the out-of-d.o.f. type as opposed to the motion type, meaning that its subjective effects can be specific to particular lenses. Darcy McG, you have two facts backwards: boke as a descriptive word for optical blur in Japan easily preceded the digital era, and digital cameras mainly yield MORE depth of field, not less, for a given angle of view, because most of them (APS-C, 4/3, and all digicams) are in essence smaller formats.
Mike J.
Michael Kostrikin
on 30 Oct 08Bokeh isn’t really something the photo geeks should care about except in terms of lenses.
Nikon 18 – 200mm zoom lens = BAD bokeh. The blurry part of the image look horrible, sort of chunky. Although it’s the best all-purpose lens in the world, IMHO.
Nikon 105mm macro lens = AMAZING bokeh. The blurry part of the image looks smooth and creamy!
Perhaps there’s a peanut-butter metaphor here somewhere.
Darcy McGee
on 30 Oct 08Mike, Sorry. I did get my quiz question backwards. Blurg. Reason #1 not to post while at work: distracted by, you know, work. I dislike the lack of DOF on digital photography.
I didn’t say it didn’t precede the digital era. The word most certainly does. I said that I shot for 20 years without hearing the word.
Some Photographers have always been a bit gadget and lingo obsessed. This has only gotten worse in the digital age, where cameras are treated more like computers.
You’re not going to find the great photographers of the 20th century discussing “Bokeh.” Not Stieglitz (who relished soft focus romanticism in his early career), not Adams (a master technician of both the shot and the print), not Mapplethorpe, not Leibovitz.
Indeed to each his own though. I’ll be out shooting.
Hell, I still shoot film. I prefer it.
Darcy McGee
on 30 Oct 08The Bokeh argument, incidentally, always reminds me of the Nikon vs. Canon vs. Leica argument (which I refuse to engage in, in a general sense.) I shoot Canon: my grandfather started me, I switched to EOS mounts because I like the mount and I still shoot Canon.
Great photos have been taken with all kind of equipment, and few observers sit around at galleries, in homes, or wherever saying “That would be a great photo, but it would be so much better if it had been taken using a Nikon.”
Similarly, I doubt most people analyze great photos and says “Damn…that’d be spectacular if it weren’t for that crappy Bokeh.”
Justin Bell
on 31 Oct 08Darcy McGee: But bokeh is no different to talking about DoF or any other aspect of photography. To say it doesn’t matter in terms of artistic value would be like saying the same of DoF. We could take you post and swap “bokeh” with “DoF” and it would be pretty much the same.
And I’m more than familiar with the over-gadgetised aspect of photography. But the fact is, knowing that side of photography isn’t mutually exclusive with the other aspects of photography. I do get a bit sick of some photographers ranting that the equipment doesn’t matter, because it sure as hell does. It’s just not the only thing that matters.
And, BTW, I have seen photos where I thought it would have been better if it had different bokeh. Sometime it’s the difference between the BG looking like many blurred shapes and looking like a continuous tone. One isn’t better than the other, of course, it really depends on what you want.
Neil Fusillo
on 31 Oct 08I’ve always been amused by the term, mostly because it’s a colloquial derogatory term in Japanese. It’s a bit like ‘moron’ or ‘idiot’ — something you might hear said (more often by western Japanese) as opposed to ‘baka,’ which has been popularised by the anime geek crowd.
I can just picture some old Japanese man yelling ‘boke!’
Chris Baptista
on 04 Nov 08Great picture.
But an alarmingly bad example of Bokeh.
This discussion is closed.