About Bokeh · Заметки

groups.yahoo.com/group/sovietcameragroup/message/902 My post to Soviet Camera Group about "bokeh" (sorry for mistakes in my English):

Debates about "bokeh" appear from time to time on all photographic forums, but I don't remember one here so maybe it's time to fix that and raise one

On Sun, 2005-05-22 at 07:58 +1000, Peter and Tricia Daley wrote:
> OK I give in. I've asked before when I saw it on Ebay but what is
> "Bokeh". How does it manifest itself, should I have it, is it a good
> thing, when was it invented, why?

·· [Continuing] ··

Bokeh is a Japanese word which refers to how a lens paints out-of-focus. "Good bokeh" means that the bokeh is pleasant for eye, and doesn't draw attention from sharp objects (subject) while serving as a good background, and gives 3D-look to image so your eye can easily see depth of the scene just from bokeh.

Nowadays digital shooters sometimes apply Gaussian Blur to background (because they can't achieve small enough DOF with their tiny lenses) and think they "added a bokeh", but that's simply not true because Blur is a 2D effect which knows only about array of pixels and doesn't know anything about contents of picture and distance to subject. Lens, by the contrary, works with light from 3D space and takes distance to any point into account.

The main reason to use high-speed primes is to shoot wide open to turn distracting and annoying backgrounds into unfocused blur or just to avoid use of artificial lighting. IMHO, if you prefer all-sharp images with great DOF, no much reasons to waste your money and effort with primes: get your favorite zoom, close it to f/8-f/16 and enjoy! You'll not see any visible differences between good zoom and primes at small apertures, so why sacrifice convenience of a zoom?

I noticed that since I got my Planars I rarely shoot with apertures narrower than f/5.6 - I use mostly f/2-f/4 to make subject a bit "jump out" from surroundings (or just to avoid using flash), so it's very important for me that my lenses are sharp wide-open and give nice out-of-focus at the same time.

Some people love big DOF and sharp pictures and they tell bokeh is a bullshit; some people love all-soft pictures and happy with triplets, pinholes and etc; some people prefer benefits of digital cameras with small sensors or use so much digital processing, they just don't care about bokeh. But even if two people agree that bokeh is important, they may argue endlessly which lens gives better bokeh, especially if they are loyal to different lens makers =)

UPD:
www.vanwalree.com/optics/bokeh.html An article about Bokeh at vanwalree.com.
medfmt.8k.com/mf/bokeh.html Camera Lenses Bokeh at medfmt.8k.com - an article and a lot of sample images from various lenses.