Bokeh or not?

Gott23 · Joined: 10 Dec 2018 Posts: 250

So I've just be lambasted on Flickr for describing this photo as Bokeh..

Now that shot on my CZJ Prakticar 50mm f1.8 at f/16 no hood. So I figured that is bokeh and flare..

Am I wrong?

D1N0 · Joined: 07 Aug 2012 Posts: 2491

Maybe some people think bokeh only exists wide open.

Oldhand · Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2019 8:05 am Post subject:

aidaho · Joined: 29 Apr 2018 Posts: 456 Location: Ukraine

I don't want to call names, but bokeh people are sometimes a little bit special. Not just on Flickr.
It is a research topic devoid of good quantifiable measurements, and thus strong opinions will easily overshadow any valid points.
Even the term 'bokeh' does not seem to be universally agreed upon, as you've just witnessed.

I'd just forget about it and move on.

P.S. There is something about completely defocused images. I have this mental notch in the back of my head to try this from time to time.

DConvert · Joined: 12 Jun 2010 Posts: 902 Location: Essex UK

To my mind Bokeh really needs an in-focus portion of the image, but the rules of the Flickr group SHOULD specify what they mean by it.

There are others who use bokeh to mean shallow DOF, if the group is one of these your best option is to simply quite & avoid it completely!

kansalliskala · Expire: 2016-12-30

nice hexagons!

(you should call them that Smile

)

Sciolist · Expire: 2021-04-16

Back in the day, bokeh only appeared in conversation when valuing how the oof area affected the in-focus subject. Bokeh was a subjective unit of measurement like hot or cold. In simple terms, you could get good bokeh which enhanced the subject or bad bokeh which detracted from it, in your opinion. So, if you didn't have an in-focus subject in the shot, you didn't have a bokeh to value. The picture is simply out of focus, although having said that, some of the great photographers in history used this technique and have become celebrated for it - Julia Margaret Cameron springs to mind. I think your pic is excellent too.

But today, bokeh seems to mean the oof area regardless of any in-focus subject and can be valued on how it looks in itself. We have a popular thread on this site called 'Bokeh only', an utter contradiction in terms for a traditionalist.

So they were wrong. You have changed the feel of a streetscape through careful use of defocus. The affect is measurable, subjectively, as we can also imagine it in focus and decide if it has been made better or worse. I think it is good bokeh, although I don't know what feel you had in mind and whether you feel you achieved it. It looks like you may be getting criticism from traditionalists.

I am a traditionalist concerning bokeh, but I know when I'm out of step with the zeitgeist, so shut-up and plough my own furrow. These changes in terms by a new generation often come around again eventually.

jamaeolus · Expire: 2015-08-20

Sciolist, I must agree. Language is fungible, words change meaning and you have to let it go. My personal pet peeve was the dilution of the word unique. Traditionally it meant one of a kind. Then people started using it as a synonym for unusual (which is a perfectly cromulent word). Modification could give any level of "unusua"l short of unique. Now we get "It is one of the more unique situations I have encountered" and we have no word that truly means absolutely one of a kind.

visualopsins · Expire: 2025-04-11

I have to agree that isn't bokeh. Back in the day the term didn't exist. What we have here is highlights in defocused image. The highlights are the subject.

philslizzy · Joined: 07 Aug 2012 Posts: 4748 Location: Cheshire, England

Yes and no. I would agree with others here that a bokeh picture should have a in focus element. But why shuld it? Bokeh didn't exist 20 years ago - or rather nobody actually gave a shit. Now you have Bokeh extremists I'm a member of a facebook group and half the members seem to be obsessed with it and invent ways of exaggerating it.

Your picture, like aidaho's is deliberately defocused, the out of focus highlights are beautiful. A great effort!

Nobody will ever completely agree with each other, its just some knob heads go crazy if you don't think their way. As with everything in life.

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9097 Location: Houston, Texas

Perhaps my definition of 'bokeh' has become over simplistic, but I tend to prefer simple definitions over complex ones. To me, 'bokeh' means out of focus highlights. And by 'highlights,' I mean areas of an image that add to its quality.

Being a linguist, I find this whole discussion interesting. There's a similar one going on over at the Pentax Forums in their Mirror Lenses thread. Similar points are being discussed.

[linguist hat]
Any living language is a fluid medium. One of the things that most marks a living language is that change occurs. But there are differences here. This relatively new term has transcended language boundaries. It is a new term, which has scarcely been around -- in English, at least -- for 20 years. A term that involves evaluating photographs in new ways, and it hasn't had time to "settle" yet within any one language. Except, most likely, Japanese. Bokeh is of Japanese origin, coming from the Japanese word boke (kanji 暈け, katakana ボケ, hiragana ぽけ), which means "blur" or "haze."

Because of its newness in English, and I'm guessing other non-Japanese languages as well, my estimation is that its definition hasn't yet moved to any sort of rigid state. Which brings me to the discussion going on here. If we look at the original meaning, the Japanese one, there is reason to claim that a totally blurry print can, in fact, be called 'bokeh.' So, in this context, this image would be bokeh:

Probably my most favorite blurry image, by the way.

We linguists don't proscribe, we describe. That is, we tend not to make and enforce rules, rather we watch how language is actually used and draw our conclusions from that. So, while it might be argued that things are still up in the air, if I had to lay odds on this topic, mine would be in favor of the looser definition, namely that any and all blurry elements of a photo can be considered 'bokeh.'
[/linguist hat]

visualopsins · Expire: 2025-04-11

To me highlights are not bokeh; highlights are highlights. Flare is flare. Bloom is bloom. Blur is blur. Bokeh is background unfocused past where anything can be discerned.

monopix · Joined: 07 Feb 2010 Posts: 32

This thread is one of many (actually too many) examples of the total misunderstanding, or misinterpretation, of the term 'bokeh'. Bokeh is about lenses, not images. The image is just the result of how the lens captures the subject and the way in which the lens captures the subject can be discussed in terms of sharpness, contrast, resolution etc. AND bokeh. There is no such thing as a 'bokeh image'. Any image that has out of focus areas 'may' give some insight into the bokeh of the lens. Out of focus highlights especially but certainly not exclusively.

Anyone who wants to know what bokeh is really about should read the three original articles published in Photo Techniques in 1997. That is where bokeh was introduced to the English speaking world. It was the editor who created the word as the literal translation from the Japanese is 'boke' which would be mispronounced so he added the h to the end.

Scans of the relevant pages from the magazine can be downloaded from...

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1AD8kuNpvUogMopyb_lAv2ZCG_HFWb8qp

Note: If anyone objects to my copying and distribution of these articles, please let me know. However, I do so only for the reason of education and learning.

Lightshow · Joined: 04 Nov 2011 Posts: 3669 Location: Calgary

Sciolist · Expire: 2021-04-16

Lloydy · Expire: 2022-01-01