When Will The Bokeh Craze End

[Original katomi]

Dean G , don’t even start on milky water...... we will be here forever by the time that debate stops the water will have frozen or boiled lol

 

[photoflyer]

Yes it could, but please no fake PS blur. I'm not opposed to the use of shallow DOF, and admire the quality that a good lens can impart in a background.

Agreed. It reminds me of vinyl and tube amps. "Analog" is always better than digital (says the guy who has not shot film in a decade). In the audio world, the slight imperfections they impart make the experience more believable.

 

[petrochemist]

But I do think a good, wide aperture lens has an added capability to enhance some shots - as we can't always control the background, particularly at any tourist spots in this over-populated world.

Indeed, very much the issue I ran into yesterday. Shooting a Saxons & Vikings event, it found most shots had a car/van in the background, or at least a crowd of people with cameras. Quite out of keeping with the period.
The f/2.8 lens I had with me where too short to narrow down the DOF (and made the battles far too small) and even the 600mm equivalent I used extensively didn't quite blur the background enough.

 

[Photo Lady]

I don't want it to go away... i think it is beautful in almost all the photos.. but it does have to look like it goes with the photo.. color blurs give you a feeling of time and place so your imagination can take it to the next level.

 

[Derrel]

Around 15 years ago I guess I bought a lens which has a reputation for smooth, creamy bokeh, the Nikon 200 mm f /2 VR. Here is a portrait of my niece Caitlin, which was made in September of 2007 with the Nikon d2x

 

[Derrel]

There is an interesting thing about background blur, and that is that the larger the aperture in millimeters the higher the level of background blurring. This is why lenses such as the 300 millimeter F / 2.8 gives such a high degree of background blurring at F 2.8 in comparison to say a 50 mm lens even when it is shot wide open at say F / 1.4.

As far as the beauty of the background or out-of-focus areas, the lens design plays a big part. Some lenses have been designed so that out of focus areas are smooth and creamy, but in other lenses out of focus areas may appear to vibrate, or to swirl. BOKEH has about four common definitions nowadays, after about 30 years or so in the American vocabulary of photography. Originally ,it was about the quality of the blur, but it has been bastardized to mean different things.

There is a pretty good article on the web , and it explains the physics underlying background blur, which is not about bokeh, but is something else entirely. The article I am speaking about shows a particularly good example of the same depth of field, but dramatically increased background blur with longer lenses. The article is one in a series extremely well-written technical explanations of various parts of photography written by, I want to say, Bob Atkins. I first read these articles over 10 years ago, and it was about 2 years ago that I took the time to revisit them. He explains some of the most contentious issues in photography in a very convincing and easy to understand manner, which is the exact opposite of what so much of Internet photography forms and websites have devolved into being.

In terms of a lens that can completely blow out the background, as we used to say, the 300 mm f / 2.8 and the 200 mm f / 2 are really good examples. Unfortunately the two lenses I mentioned each weigh 7 pounds or more in most cases, and are pretty darned expensive. Other lenses which can defocus the background quite well but for a lot less money are the 135 mm f/2 models
And Nikon's venerable 180mm F / 2.8. With the right situations a 300 m m f / 4 can do a pretty good job, as may a 70 to 200mm F / 2.8 zoom lens, and even the lowly 135 mm f / 2.8 can blow out the background quite a bit, as can an 85mm f / 1.4 lens, and Nikon has a new 105mm f/1.4 that is really good at defocusing backgrounds when shot at f/1.4 or f/ 2.

 

[Derrel]

Here are a couple

bokeh-centric shots in reduced-size format that I have on my phone.

 

[Derrel]

 

[photoflyer]

There is an interesting thing about background blur, and that is that the larger the aperture in millimeters the higher the level of background blurring. This is why lenses such as the 300 millimeter F / 2.8 gives such a high degree of background blurring at F 2.8 in comparison to say a 50 mm lens even when it is shot wide open at say F / 1.4.

That is great to know. I'm going to experiment with that on the nifty 50 and the 70-200 f2.8 L. Plus the 70-200 is still near perfect at 2.8 whereas the nifty is a tiny bit flawed at 1.8 in bright light if you pixel peep.

 

[Tropicalmemories]

View attachment 181088 View attachment 181089 View attachment 181091

Lovely images!

And how, ladies and gentlemen of the Photo Forum Jury, could anyone not appreciate such fine images?

The case for the defence rests M'Lud.

 

[Derrel]

I got this new cellular phone about 3 weeks ago. I loaded up a bunch of

of old photos that I had on a microSD card and here are three photos I have that shows how the long focal length and physically wide aperture of the 200 m m f / 2 VR lens completely softens backgrounds into creamy smoothness. These were newspaper sports photos that I shot for a couple of local area papers, using the old Nikon d2x, which had perhaps the worst sensor I have ever used. However, with a spectacular piece of $4,000 glass on the front, it did pretty well. These are basically unretouched images, made a full six years before I got my first copy of Lightroom, and began retouching my images.

 

[DanOstergren]

I think that if a photographer strives to have the creamiest bokeh because they like the look, theres nothing wrong with them obsessing over it. That obsession is one of the things that makes photography fun. Sure, one might improve as a photographer by venturing away from wide open f/stops, but it doesn't matter if they're not achieving a look that they like. It also doesn't really matter if a client or average person notices because in my opinion the "creamiest", quality bokeh isn't really for the satisfaction of a client. \_(ツ)_/¯

 

[DanOstergren]

maybe this could be a weekly challenge

Yes it could, but please no fake PS blur. I'm not opposed to the use of shallow DOF, and admire the quality that a good lens can impart in a background. I'm just of the opinion that it's a tool that doesn't need to always be used, and the fake blur added post detracts rather then enhances an image.

Couldn't we just let people do what they like for themselves? I've seen many applications of fake blur that were done beautifully.

 

[DanOstergren]

Does the average person who looks at your images, and clients who book you, really care about these things. Do they care that you had to sell a body part to buy your new lens, are they impressed with how big your lens is, or what its maximum aperture is, and they certainly won’t sit there ooohhing and aawwweeing, over the background when they’re looking at their family portraits. All they really care about is the subject, the quality of the bokeh is not important to them, unless it's so distracting that it's annoying (a point many are getting to).

The average person may not understand why they like one image more than another - but they do. They’re attracted to the qualities that these lenses bring to an image even if it’s only subconsciously.

This, 100%.

 

[photoflyer]

Couldn't we just let people do what they like for themselves? I've seen many applications of fake blur that were done beautifully.

Certainly. For me, there is something rewarding about doing something naturally but then if I held true to that I would shoot film.