Bokeh, Bokeh, Bokeh....?

[Kevin Crisp]

Don't take this question the wrong way; I am not trying to make a point by just asking it. (I am not trying to make a point at all, this is a question.) This truly is something I am curious about. Here goes: It seems to me that during the time I have used this forum and its predecessor that the subject of "bokeh" has gone from an occasionally (rarely) mentioned comment/subject to something of extraordinary interest and importance to many people. The first time I saw the word I had no idea what people were discussing. I've been seriously interested in photography and darkroom work since about 1970 and the only time I had ever heard the subject mentioned before this forum (and it wasn't by that name) was when someone told me he thought his Leica rendered out of focus parts of the negative in a pleasant way.

It seems like the frequency of its current discussion puts it up there in interest with the availability of sheet film. I'm not saying Bokeh particulars are unimportant or non existent, so those of you who were already mentally forming your responses can take a deep breath. What I am wondering is whether this subject (under this name or another) was something of such apparent interest, say, ten years ago. I honestly don't know the answer. If it wasn't, then why has it become so important to so many people now?

[Greg Lockrey]

I'm hearing ya. My history with photography is as long as yours and the first time I heard of it and it's apparent importance is at the Leica Forum on Pnet. I'm from the school of "getting as much depth of field and sharpness as possible". We called it "the Leica glow" in the olden days.

[Oren Grad]

It's easier to discuss something when you can attach a concise, easy to remember name to it. Funny that you should ask just now; the suite of feature articles in Photo Techniques magazine that introduced the term into common usage in the West ran in the May/June 1997 issue, exactly ten years ago.

As to whether it's very important to more people outside of Japan now - very important being defined by changes in how people spend their money - as opposed to just being discussed more widely, I don't know.

The classic lens experts here will remind us that the concept was appreciated and discussed in the large format world many decades ago, though the Japanese term was not used. Perhaps an equally interesting question is why the concept retreated from the spotlight for such a long while.

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

Two helpful links:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/co...04-04-04.shtml
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/bokeh.shtml

The term bokeh, I suspect, has come to have a number of different meanings, quite different from how they were orginally introduced to the English speaking world by our own Oren Grad, Mike Johnston, and others. In particular I notice that "bokeh" is now often identified with lens abberations (eg: the "swirly" bokeh seen in the corners of some Petzval lenses), and eBay sellers now tout this poor bokeh as a major selling point. Has the notion of a neutral bokeh been lost?

In any case, alongside Oren's reminder that these concepts were "appreciated and discussed in the large format world many decades ago", I think that we can also link recent concern with bokeh to a questioning of the f64 aesthetic, and an increasing interest in pictorialism. I have witnessed some of these changes in this very forum over the past six and a half years.

[Eric James]

It's easier to discuss something when you can attach a concise...

Well said Oren! I used this same point to explain the concept of bokeh to someone just yesterday. To offer an analogy: There is a technique used in rockclimbing called "dead pointing"; dead pointing involves launching for a hold in such a way that you arrive at the hold with minimal kinetic energy (you're more likely to fight gravity this way). Before I knew the term I had learned to use the technique, but once I had a name for it I employed it regularly, and my climbing improved. The same is true for the concept of bokeh in my photography. I learned of it in 1997 or so in photo.net discussions - back when my only lens was a 50mm 1.4 for 35mm.

As Oren points out, if you have a concise term to wrap around a concept, your awareness of the concept is enhanced. It's not the importance or validity of the concept that grows, it our awareness.

Most viewers focus in on that which is sharply focused; in landscape work this may include everything - it's often our goal anyway. Portraiture and still life often lends itself to selective focus - leaving upwards of 90% of the image in the out-of-focus realm. If you care about your entire image, then you'll learn to care about bokeh.

These threads and the attached photos from forum participants have really inspired me:

http://www.largeformatphotography.in...highlight=wide

http://www.largeformatphotography.in...ad.php?t=25403

And the work and websites of our resident bokeh masters, Ken, Jack, and Jim, have inspired me as well.

[Brian C. Miller]

It really depends on what you want from a lens. I just bought a Versar from one of the forum members specifically for its boke effects when opened wide. The photograph has to be properly composed for the boke to be a positive component.

Many times the boke of the photograph (not the lens) detracts from the overall image. I have a couple like that, and I've seen others. A big out-of-focus bright spot draws the eye from the subject.


Hmmm, a search on the Japanese-English dictionaries is interesting. The last time I did searches on boke, I came up with "missing the mark." This time I came up with "まとはずれ" for missing the mark, which appears to be pronounced mato-teki. (A related word seems to be "irrelevant" 的外れ, mato-hazure). Boke gives, at best, "to fade" (惚ける), and at worst, "to bring calamity upon oneself" (墓穴を掘る).

[Oren Grad]

Brian, Japanese is a really fun language to study - there are enough homophones to keep one's head spinning, bring calamity upon oneself, induce senility, etc.

My copy of the fourth (1991) edition of the Koojien, a comprehensive Japanese-Japanese dictionary, explicitly lists unsharpness of focus as one of the meanings of bokeru (惚ける), in addition to fading color and fading mental acuity.

The other items you picked up are not relevant.

[Jim Galli]

A subject I'm guilty of stirring up a little dust on myself. I haven't taken a quantitative scientific approach at all. But I have given the phenomenon more than a little thought.

Here is one angle fwiw. I think we're seeing a very similar reaction to a very similar occurance with almost exactly 100 years span in between. Stieglitz and the Photo Secession were reacting to a dual phenomenon. The anastigmat lens, and the hand held roll film camera. Suddenly the mindless masses were making millions of mindless sharp snapshots with their Kodaks and Senecas and the snooty as ever art community moved dead opposite with their pictorialist lenses. They were seperate from the riff raff.

I think we're seeing something very similar. How many oversharpened Canon 5D scenics with dripping colors can a person take before they go looking for something slightly more ecclectic.

That only partly explains the phenomena. The other argument is that the pictures when done well can be truely beautiful. The ones that Jack Flesher posted of the Orchids done with color IR and a PS 945 just knocked my socks off. They are the most gorgeous pictures I've seen in many a day. Certainly removed and indeed in a whole other class from the usual rock and knot hole pictures we LF types subscribe to.

[Ole Tjugen]

If we define "good bokeh" as "a pleasing transition between the sharp and the unsharp parts of a picture", then that was a major selling point for Voigtländer's Heliar in the 1930's.

It seems to me that the concept has been known for a long time, it just hasn't been summed up in one word until recently.

I have an original advertisment (in German) somewhere here, what I wrote is a translation from memory.

[Oren Grad]

For another interesting historical reference, see this page from the 1912-13 Wollensak catalog, in which the Verito is described as showing "no distortion, double lines or other optical imperfections". "Double lines", of course, is what the Japanese call "ni-sen bokeh" (literally, "two-line bokeh").

Again, an interesting question is what changed so that in 1912-13 Wollensak would consider that to be an effective selling point, but later on considered it not worth mentioning.