Bokeh

[rogerzilla]

Gosh.

76 Amazing Examples of Bokeh Photography « Artatm – Creative Art Magazine

Some lenses have it, some don't.  My 1950s Leitz Elmar (4 element Tessar design) gives wonderfully smooth background blur, the collapsible Leitz Summicron (7 element Gauss design) I briefly had was horrible, with a real double image effect.

This Leica Noctilux shot, which I didn't take (a Noctilux 50mm f/0.95 is about £7,000) made me gasp, although it's as much heat haze as bokeh.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5139/5540689893_4493a86734_b.jpg

More amazing shots in this thread:

The ultimate Bokeh thread; pics please - Rangefinderforum.com

[Lindagordinho]

My daughter took this.  I thought it was rather good.

[perpetual dan]

Theres some rather nice images there, although I always took bokeh to be background rather than the only thing in the image - which isn't a criticism of the more abstract images and I'm happy to be corrected.

[frankly frankie]

Most ultra-narrow depth of field effects are just willy-waving, no real pictorial merit that I can see.

Not necessarily a comment on the images linked so far, just my general view on blurry photos.

[pcolbeck]

I like it in the right context. Good for portrait and macro particularly.

Some of the latest Fiji cameras including the point and shoot compacts have a way of faking shallow depth of field. They take two pictures one in focus and one out of focus and then combine the two. Clever way of doing it in auto mode.

[nicknack]

I like it in the right context. Good for portrait and macro particularly.

Some of the latest Fiji cameras including the point and shoot compacts have a way of faking shallow depth of field. They take two pictures one in focus and one out of focus and then combine the two. Clever way of doing it in auto mode.

Good for pics of palm trees against blurred ocean?

[pcolbeck]

Oops

[Andustar]

Many of the shots in the first link (although interesting in their own right) display  bokeh qualities that you don't want in a lens. That is: hard edged OOF highlights. Normally you want those highlights to be soft edged.

[rogerzilla]

Yes, "ideal" bokeh has OOF points with intense brightness in the centre, fading to the outside of the blur circle.  Basically it's uncorrected spherical aberration.

The nastiest bokeh of any lens I've used was with a collapsible Leica Summicron at f/2.8 (look at the twigs bottom right).  The next generation of 'cron was much better, although no 50mm 'cron has ever had really good bokeh.



Apparently some current Canon prime lenses have really good bokeh, and Nikon do a DC lens which is actually designed to make the effect adjustable.

There's a good article on Ken Rockwell's site: Bokeh

[Jaded]

Surely the worst bokeh is seen on mirror lenses?

[rogerzilla]

Oh yes, they're famously horrible.  Does anyone still make them?  500mm f/8 used to be a common specification, but you needed very fast film all the time (sports photographers stuck with their 300mm f/2.8 and 600mm f/4 telephotos, which cost as much as a car and are the size of a Saturn V rocket).  Maybe slow mirror lenses are in vogue again with low-noise digital sensors, I don't know.

[David Martin]

Well, here is some recent mirror lens bokeh action..


DSC_6181 by davidmamartin, on Flickr

[Biggsy]

^ Some doughnuts are visible there if you look closely.  Not that I think doughnuts are so bad

Slow mirror lenses still sell on eBay - to digital photographers - just because they're cheap and small compared to normal long telephotos.

The Tokina 500mm f8 I acquired is not as sharp as a budget 55-300mm f5.6 zoom with a 1.5X converter.

[Exit Stage Left]

I've no idea whether this Bokeh is good or bad, I tend to use shallow depth of field to isolate detail.

[rogerzilla]

Most would say bad because of the double image effect.  What lens is it?

[Exit Stage Left]

Most would say bad because of the double image effect.  What lens is it?

The 18-55 kit lens on the Sony NEX 5.
It has the virtue of being very easy to use, and with the 16 mm pancake lens it's very portable.

This was after the Portmahomack 400k Audax.


I bought the camera to get some expensive looking 'filmic' video effects, and it's good for that.

[Ivo]

Oh yes, they're famously horrible.  Does anyone still make them?  500mm f/8 used to be a common specification, but you needed very fast film all the time (sports photographers stuck with their 300mm f/2.8 and 600mm f/4 telephotos, which cost as much as a car and are the size of a Saturn V rocket).  Maybe slow mirror lenses are in vogue again with low-noise digital sensors, I don't know.

I own a Panagor 5.6/300 and a Russian made 8.0/500. Occasionally I use them.


5.6/300


8.0/500

I must admit that I prefer a 'real' 500mm above the mirror. Still it's a handy one to have, doesn't cost much and easy to transport.

[Jakob]

My favourite lens for this: Nikon 50mm f1.4

[Exit Stage Left]

Inspired by this 'bokeh' idea I looked around to see what lenses I had about the house. The most obvious candidates were a couple of Industar 61s on some old FEDs. Lots of people have posted good things about the bokeh from these. They are 39mm Leica screw mount. An adapter for my Sony NEX 5 cost £17.99. The NEX can be set to give a magnification of 7x and 14x for focus assist via a manual button, the camera is set to fire without a lens on aperture priority. You can vary the exposure + or- or set to full manual. So you have a digital camera with manual focus and exposure control and a lens of 80mm equivalent and f2.8.
I took a picture of a garden trolley with the Sony kit zoom at 55mm, the widest it will go at that focal length is f5.6


I then took a similar shot with the Industar, it's 53mm at f2.8.



I'll experiment with it as a portrait lens, and of course I can take full HD video, although I'll need a tripod because it's unstabilised.

I got an M42 adapter for the same price, as I've got a Carl Zeiss Jena off a Practika and some macro tubes to play with.

[Exit Stage Left]

I start to understand what it all means. The bokeh from a Carl Zeiss Jena 29mm f2.8 is very different.


I went in search of a subject that would show the difference between the kit lens on the NEX and the Industar 61 both fully open at f2.8 and stopped down to f8

I decided to use our local Centurion tank surrounded by cornfield flowers.



That's the f2.8 Industar. and this is what the out of focus flowers are like.




The kit lens couldn't approach that shallow depth of field, this is what it came up with in 'Intelligent Auto', it doesn't seem to recognise armoured fighting vehicles among flowers, but it's a good effort. The Industar shot was fully manual, 200 ASA.



Bokeh set - a set on Flickr

[rogerzilla]

A couple of mine:

Good bokeh (Leitz Elmar red scale 5cm at f/4)



Bad bokeh (Leitz Summicron collapsible 5cm at f/2.8 )



What you want is an Airy disc which is brighter in the centre than at the edges.  A perfect lens gives a uniformly-illuminated Airy disc, which is "neutral" bokeh rather than "good" bokeh.  Some lenses, like the 'cron, have an Airy disc which is brighter at the edges than in the centre, which emphasises lines which should be out of focus by turning them into double images.

Nikon make a DC (Defocus Control) lens which is supposed to be brilliant.

[Exit Stage Left]

A bit of reading shows that the Elmar and the Industar have a joint Tessar heritage. I remember a previous thread where Ivo praised the Industar.
They're commonest on Feds, so I assume that they are best suited to digitals with a short lens to sensor distance, such as E Mount Sonys and Micro 4/3s. Daisies, Poppies and campions are all at their best now and make a good subject for this I think, as they occur in drifts. Road embankments and cuttings are often a good place.

[Ivo]

I was especially praising the Jupiter 9. What you want is an excessive amount of diafragma blades. Nowadays 6 or 8 is usual. If you have the real sweet stuff from the past that can go up to 69, creating a near perfect circle for the diafragma in stead of a angular one.

[rogerzilla]

The diaphragm has some effect, but spherical aberration is the main factor.

[Paul Metcalfe]

I use a digital compact and therefore, due to sensor size/focal length, have a very limited ability to blur the background.

I use Photoshop's "Gaussian Blur" a lot when I want to separate a subject from a background.  It's quite effective.