> There are some lenses (Leica's come into mind) that are said to have great
> Bokeh. Now I can never understand how they judge "good" bokeh vs. "bad"
> bokeh. I've read a paper on it, (several papers actually) but it covered
> the technical stuff. When it's all said and done, what am I looking for??
>
Hi Albert,
I'll give it a shot as to how *I* understand it. Of course, five others will
tell me that I got it 'wrong'! <g>
Bokeh is the vague term of how a lens renders the 'out of focus' areas of the
shot. In portraiture, where the subject is generally to the front, this bokeh
area would be the entire background that surrounds the subject. A pleasing
bokeh (and that's what we're looking for in a lens) does not draw attention
to itself, it draws the viewer toward the subject. You've seen this many
times but you probably didn't completely realize it, you weren't looking for
it. You may have just commented: "what a nice picture." Pleasing bokeh
appears almost 'painterly' when viewed, what's out of focus should be
difficult to actually determine what one is seeing in that out of focus area,
it shouldn't be very obvious. Another way of describing good bokeh is that
the main subject appears to have 'snap' , it's a somewhat 3-D effect between
the subject and the background.
Examples of bad bokeh are points of light, even though out of focus, appear
as what I call 'hot spots', or, noticeable shapes of the aperture blades that
just stand out a bit too much, or those shapes have a well defined bright
edge to them.
As you can guess by now, more than just the lens design influences bokeh. But
we're talking _after_ we take into account aperture, subject distance, and
depth of field. It's just that some lenses are known for their abundance of
good bokeh- the 85/2, the 100s, and others. (Zuikos of course .)
Best,
George S.
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