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  #1  
Old 16th August 2020, 12:41 PM
Nat Polton Nat Polton is offline
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Default BOKEH, excuse for poor technique and equipment?

I have to admit that I only heard the word Bokeh about a year ago.
I knew of it but tried to avoid it if possible.
Now that my attention has been drawn to it, it seems to jar on me when I see it in photographs.
Reading about it on the web people go a bundle on different types/styles of these intrusive splashes of light in the background.
Is it a case of "The Kings New Clothes?" A sales mans bluff for poor lenses and techniques?

If you look back at the classic black and white films of the 40s, 50s, and 60s, something like "The Third Man" and especially the Alfred Hitchcock movies they have beautiful blacks and whites with a good range of tones in between. Fantastic lighting and exposure and none or a very small amount of Bokeh. Those boys and girls new their theory and practice in those days. Film was expensive and not to be wasted.

So is Bokeh just an excuse for poor equipment design and incompetent photographic technique?

Cheers.
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Old 16th August 2020, 01:03 PM
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PanFrank PanFrank is offline
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Hi Nat,
I think that it is mainly about lens design. Some lenses show nicer Bokeh at open aperture than others. I do not know though whether there is a trade off to other qualities of the lens.
Frank
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Old 16th August 2020, 02:44 PM
Richard Gould Richard Gould is offline
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I am sure that others will explain thighs better than I can, but as far as I understand Bokeh it is to do with the way lenses show out of focus highlights wide open, for instance, tne 1.9 80 mm lens fFD or my mamiya, and the pentax 1.9 lens on my ME super gives very nice looking bokeh, where a canon 50 mm lens gives sort of messy OOF highlights, so the mamiya and pentax lens are great for close up and portraiture wide open, but the canon fd mount lens simply does not work as well for close up or portraits, hope this kind of explains it, even very good, sharp lenses can have bad bokeh, where cheaper lenses can perhaps be slightly down on sharpness but have great bokeh
Richard
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Old 16th August 2020, 05:11 PM
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Rob Archer Rob Archer is offline
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It's more an issue for portrait and close-up photographers and is very much an individual thing. One person's beautiful bokeh may appear hideous to others. I'v got a 1980s Hanimex 500mm mirror lens. The out-of-focus highlights are sort of dougnut rings. I personally find the affect hideous but I know someone else who shoots with these lenses specifically for the effect! That said, 99% of my photography is landscape where I want as much front-to-back sharpness as possible so the idea of bokeh is largely irrelevant. Each to their own!
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Old 16th August 2020, 06:13 PM
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MartyNL MartyNL is offline
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I re-read this in-depth article not so long ago as I was preparing to shoot some 8x10" portraits with many old (brass) lenses.

https://luminous-landscape.com/bokeh/
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Old 16th August 2020, 07:03 PM
Richard Gould Richard Gould is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob Archer View Post
It's more an issue for portrait and close-up photographers and is very much an individual thing. One person's beautiful bokeh may appear hideous to others. I'v got a 1980s Hanimex 500mm mirror lens. The out-of-focus highlights are sort of dougnut rings. I personally find the affect hideous but I know someone else who shoots with these lenses specifically for the effect! That said, 99% of my photography is landscape where I want as much front-to-back sharpness as possible so the idea of bokeh is largely irrelevant. Each to their own!
I have to say,Rob, I agree about the mirror lens, I bought one once, it was a few years ago, and it was in a sale and so cheap, I used it once and the doughnuts were awful to my eyes, but others who saw the prints liked them, I do a mixture of close up photography and landscape/seascape, more of the latter, but when doing close up bokeh comes into play, but one mans meat is another mans poison, as tghey say, and what I think of as good bokeh may be terrible bokeh to someone else, beauty, as they say, is in the eyes of the beholder
Richard
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Old 17th August 2020, 02:48 PM
Svend Svend is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nat Polton View Post
I have to admit that I only heard the word Bokeh about a year ago.
I knew of it but tried to avoid it if possible.
Now that my attention has been drawn to it, it seems to jar on me when I see it in photographs.
Reading about it on the web people go a bundle on different types/styles of these intrusive splashes of light in the background.
Is it a case of "The Kings New Clothes?" A sales mans bluff for poor lenses and techniques?

If you look back at the classic black and white films of the 40s, 50s, and 60s, something like "The Third Man" and especially the Alfred Hitchcock movies they have beautiful blacks and whites with a good range of tones in between. Fantastic lighting and exposure and none or a very small amount of Bokeh. Those boys and girls new their theory and practice in those days. Film was expensive and not to be wasted.

So is Bokeh just an excuse for poor equipment design and incompetent photographic technique?

Cheers.

Nat, I agree that there seems to be far too much emphasis in the online photo world about bokeh. There are clearly a lot of certifiable bokeh nuts out there who talk as if nothing else matters in the image. In this respect you might be right -- they appear to be diverting attention away from the main image, and possible lack of quality there.

An aside: I really dislike the word bokeh. Grates on my nerves. Sounds like a medical condition. Let's just call it what it is...out of focus areas.

As for the aesthetic qualities of out of focus areas, I feel that despite all the online noise there is something to it. Basically, my main criteria here is that it doesn't distract and draw the eye away from the main subject. There are a lot of lenses that do this, and I always wondered why I didn't take to them until I realized there was all this unattractive and distracting stuff happening around the main subject that bothered me. For example, in my quest for a small hiking/biking camera I recently borrowed a highly-regarded and rather expensive digital compact from a friend - the Fuji X100F. I loved using the camera, and for the most part the image quality I got out of it was good, even excellent in a few cases. But the out of focus areas were harsh and busy (to my eye). What could have otherwise been very nice images of, say, close-up nature scenes, were spoiled by the rather ugly out of focus parts. Needless to say I did not buy one of these.

The best lenses should just render out of focus areas as just that -- out of focus and otherwise unaltered in appearance. Simple. If they add a bit of softness or dreamy quality then so much the better. So, bottom line, I think out of focus rendering does matter, but definitely not to the extent that all those on the web want to make of it.
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  #8  
Old 17th August 2020, 07:08 PM
Lostlabours Lostlabours is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PanFrank View Post
Hi Nat,
I think that it is mainly about lens design. Some lenses show nicer Bokeh at open aperture than others. I do not know though whether there is a trade off to other qualities of the lens.
Frank

It's about aberrations, better/newer designs tend to eliminate or rather show less soft swirlyness. I dislike the term Bokeh so don't use it.

The holy grail of 35mm lenses is the Carl Zeiss Jena 58mm f2 Biotar and it's mega expensive big brother the 75mm f1.5 Biotar both designed and first sold for Pre-WWII Exacta cameras.

The recent Kickstarter scam to reproduce them failed late 2018. Same person was behind numerous other lenses and a new SLR. A new company is bringing the Meyer Optik lenses out this year.

The Lomo and similar brigade go for the 58mm f2 Helios 44 lens a Russian copy of the Biotar, for the supposed Bokeh. I had one with a Zenit E back in the late 60's early 70's and it was an excellent lens but not quite as good as the real thing, the CZJ coatings were better.

In the last couple of years I bought a CZJ 58mm f2 Biotar from Simon Chesterman (Collectable Camears) it came with a Praktina body, it was chaep because the camera body ahd been engraved with a serial number (these were pro cameras well before the Nikon F). Ironically lens and camera were less than a 58mm f2 Helios at the same camera fair, a lens seller had quite a number of 58mm Helios lenses at £50 and then various adapters to Digital cameras as well. I think he has a website promoting Bokeh and old lenses

If you/we want the insulate of swirlyness a Petzval is the best option. hence the Lomo ones, but the real thing is a lot cheaper, we it was in my case

This mint condition Petzval was £25



Found in a farmers barn covered in muck spiders inside it is actually in excellent condition after a wash and polish of the brass work.

.

Here's the Biotar



Ian
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  #9  
Old 18th August 2020, 06:59 AM
Lostlabours Lostlabours is offline
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Not sure what happened should be the clean Petzval



Ian
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Old 18th August 2020, 07:33 AM
Collas Collas is offline
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Amazing what a wire brush and Dettol can do.
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