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Re: [OM] Flower and Bokeh, was The Top

Subject: Re: [OM] Flower and Bokeh, was The Top
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:32:38 -0700
On 9/12/2011 8:04 AM, Chris Trask wrote:
>> The bokeh is pretty smooth, and less distracting I grant you.  The
>> camera and lens combination are a pleasure to use, even though
>> it's a bit long for a standard lens, it makes a well balanced
>> piece of kit, both optically and physically.
>>
>       Yes, you can just barely discern the hexagonal shapes.
>
>       In the earlier photo by Moose:
>
> http://galleries.moosemystic.net/MooseFoto/index.php?gallery=Home/Garden_Summer_2011&image=_MG_1852cria60.jpg
>
> you don't see any bokeh items as the background has been sufficiently 
> darkened.  This photo of his is actually a nicely composed artsy photo of 
> bee, flower, and flower buds without background distractions.


Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!

I'm going to disagree with you slightly on the technical meaning of bokeh, 
though. Wikipedia's entry agrees with my 
understanding and Mike Johnston's definition.

"In photography, bokeh is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in 
out-of-focus areas of an image, or "the way 
the lens renders out-of-focus points of light." Differences in lens aberrations 
and aperture shape cause some lens 
designs to blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others 
produce blurring that is unpleasant or 
distracting—"good" and "bad" bokeh, respectively."

and 'The English spelling /bokeh/ was popularized in 1997 in /Photo Techniques/ 
magazine, when Mike Johnston, the editor 
at the time, commissioned three papers on the topic for the March/April 1997 
issue; he altered the spelling to suggest 
the correct pronunciation to English speakers, saying "it is properly 
pronounced with bo as in bone and ke as in 
Kenneth, with equal stress on either syllable"'

On that basis, I would say that this image has what one might call near 
background bokeh in the OOF images of stems and 
the buds and far background bokeh is the dim, very soft background. I'm not 
sure, but it seems you may be using bokeh to 
identify unpleasant or unnatural looking OOF areas.

I would say that this image has very good bokeh, with soft central lightness in 
each highlight, tapering off gently and 
smoothly into the background. One of the things I like about this lens is the 
good bokeh at 300 mm and close focal 
distances. Unfortunately, at other focal lengths, focal distances and subject 
to background distances, it can have kinda 
crummy bokeh.

Jim's flower has slightly bad bokeh, not necessarily in the hexagons, but in 
that they are darker in the center and have 
relatively bright, hard outside edges. In an otherwise identical image with 
good bokeh, the hexagons would be hardly 
discernible, if at all, as the center of each highlight would be bright, 
tapering down in brightness to an edge that's 
not clearly defined.

In Chris B's flower image the bokeh is again not particularly bad, but not 
good. The hexagons in the bright green area 
are less bright compared to the background so less noticeable. Further back and 
against the dark background, their 
darker centers and hardish edges create an unpleasant, to me, busy, edgy 
quality.

Really good bokeh is rare with modern lenses.

Boke Boke Moose
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