Bokeh at different focus distances 85L vs 35L

guitarjeff wrote in post #16434360
This would indicate that there can be bokeh with zero blur. Since blur can be measured, and any blur can be called bokeh if someone subjectively likes it, and zero blur can never be called bokeh, sounds to me like bokeh requires a certain amount of blur, it has to be an amount MORE than zero. So it sounds like it can be measured and must have a definite amount other than zero.

Hey, why not argue semantics.

By your argument though, the word 'tasty' could define the amount food on a plate. Since if the plate had no food on it, it could neither be 'tasty' nor 'awful'.

Bokeh can work the same way. The blur can be good, or the blur can be bad. And you do indeed have to have some amount of blur in the first place before it can be either. But that does not mean that the amount of blur must be defined by the word that describes it's aesthetic appearance.

I can say "This food is great, but I wish there was more of it."

I can say "this lens has good bokeh, but it often does not create enough blur unless the background is very far."

I tend to like longer lenses due to the compression they offer in terms of the background blur/perspective. But you can get pretty comparable results depending on your distance from the subject.

guitarjeff wrote in post #16434360
This would indicate that there can be bokeh with zero blur. Since blur can be measured, and any blur can be called bokeh if someone subjectively likes it, and zero blur can never be called bokeh, sounds to me like bokeh requires a certain amount of blur, it has to be an amount MORE than zero. So it sounds like it can be measured and must have a definite amount other than zero.

Trying not to dive too much into the debate of terms, but 'bokeh' is a quality. Many will argue that 'bokeh' does not even have inherent 'pleasing' vs. 'displeasing' characteristic, as the same characteristic might look nice in some cases, but not nice in others...contextual in judgment. For example, the 'donut' bokeh of mirror telephoto lenses might appear quite nice in an abstract, while it is very distracting in a portrait.
Yes, zero blur cannot be said to have 'bokeh', but how do you quantify what is a subjective characteristic. Is there a 'lot of bokeh' in this photo?!
http://www.dpreview.co​m …43101&View=Resu​lts&Rows=4

Although many discount what Rockwell posts in his subjective comments, one cannot ignore some pretty good write-ups, like Bokeh.
http://www.kenrockwell​.com/tech/bokeh.htm
Note the three types of bokeh shown (Fig 1,2,3), they are quite different. But you don't say 'there is a lot' of one vs. another.

guitarjeff wrote in post #16434341
So can there be bokeh WITH ZERO BLUR? If not, then bokeh cannot exist without some blur. Can blur exist without being Bokeh? Even a small amount of blur can have it's subjective qualities liked by someone, which means that any blur can be called bokeh. So it sounds like the proper definition of bokeh is any area of a photo that is blurred because of the depth of field being placed on a subject and yet not being deep enough to bring all elements of the frame in to focus. So I agree that amount of blur is not bokeh other than that there must be some blur more than zero. Any amount of blur can be called nokeh, because anyone might like the qualities of that blur.

Since bokeh is a subjective characteristic of blur, it can only have a value if there is blur present. That does not make the blur itself "bokeh".

I don't quite get why people think blur and bokeh are different.. as Bokeh is the literal translation of blur in Japanese

Rushmore wrote in post #16435220
I don't quite get why people think blur and bokeh are different.. as Bokeh is the literal translation of blur in Japanese

Interesting, but not entirely relevant. Foreign words are often borrowed for concepts that do not equate entirely with their literal translation. ("Pajero" comes to mind). In English, "bokeh" pertains to the quality of blur.

Rushmore wrote in post #16435220
I don't quite get why people think blur and bokeh are different.. as Bokeh is the literal translation of blur in Japanese

The specific meaning of the word in Japanese is irrelevant.

In English, we have a word for blur....it is 'blur'. So it is totally stupid for us to adapt a foreign word to say the exact same damn thing that we can already say in English.

And it doesn't matter if 'bokeh' means 'gramma with Alzheimer's' or whatever in Japanese either. We are stealing their word and using it in English to say something that is not otherwise clearly stated.

So....bokeh really refers to a fairly complex interaction of lens aberration correction with how background areas are rendered. However you slice it, this aesthetic quality of the blur region is not something that is conveyed quite simply in English. So the idea of appropriating a foreign word (whatever it really means) to describe this phenomenon is appropriate.

Did you ever get that really weird feeling like something you are experiencing now has happened to you before in a very specific way? In other words....have you ever had deja vu?

Isn't 'deja vu' a much simpler way to say all that?

But is 'bokeh' really shorthand for 'blur'? No, it isn't. If using 'bokeh' in English is to be worth the effort then it needs to mean more than 'blur' just as 'deja vu' means more than 'to see again'.

Do people *seriously* still bicker about the term "bokeh"? I think it is time that everyone accepts the use of the word now means BOTH the quality of the blur, and the amount.

Invertalon wrote in post #16435674
Do people *seriously* still bicker about the term "bokeh"? I think it is time that everyone accepts the use of the word now means BOTH the quality of the blur, and the amount.

Seriously, yes.
Bicker, no.
I think it's time that people accept that "blur" means "blur", and "bokeh", the subjective quality of that blur.

What is the point of having two synonyms for one concept, and no distinct word at all for another?

Rushmore wrote in post #16435220
I don't quite get why people think blur and bokeh are different.. as Bokeh is the literal translation of blur in Japanese

The English spelling bokeh was popularized in 1997 in Photo Techniques magazine, when the editor Mike Johnston commissioned three papers about bokeh for the March/April 1997 issue. The May/June 1997 issue of Photo Techniques published three articles on bokeh:

• “What is Bokeh?” by John Kennerdell;
  
• “Notes on the Terminology of Bokeh“ by Oren Grad; and
  
• “A Technical view of Bokeh” by Harold Merklinger.
  

• bokeh refers to the rendition of the out of focus areas of a photograph, and may be classified as good or bad bokeh.
  
• good bokeh softens the objects in front of the plane of focus (mae-boke).
  
• Out-of-focus background objects (ushiro-bokeh) lose detail but maintain their shapes and tones.
  

All I said was that there HAD to be SOME amount of blur for there to be bokeh, that is a fact. If not, show me some bokeh that has no blur. I didn't say that bokeh had to define HOW MUCH blur, only that there HAS to be SOME blur. You took my comment to a meaning that it didn't have.

There would be no taste of THAT PARTICULAR food if there was no food there. You could say there is food in the world that is tasty, but in the same way you could say OTHER pictures have bokeh because they have blur, but the pic we are talking about has no blur, so that pic has no bokeh.

It can be GOOD TO SOME, bad to others. But BLUR is still blur, and it's still bokeh, unless you can define what bokeh is WITHOUT BLUR!!! Can you tell me what bokeh is without blur?

That's right, and if there is blur, it CAN BE LIKED and referred to as bokeh, simple as that. I can like ANY blur I want to, and to me, it's bokeh, because it has the quality I like in bokeh/blur, I can say that ABOUT ANY blur, anywhere, anytime. And since you just told me there has to be blur to be bokeh, and I just explained that I can refer properly to any blur I like as bokeh with the qualities I like, then any blur is bokeh. The two don't exist alone because anyone can call any blur, bokeh.

I never said a thing like that. I said we do have to have MORE than a zero amount of blur. I never said if you have bokeh then you automatically know how much blur you have. I simply said that you do have to have SOME and not zero amount. That doesn't mean bokeh has to be an 8 on the blur scale or a 2 on the blur scale, only that it has to be more than 0. So again, bokeh doesn't exist without blur, and ANY blur can be considered bokeh, because it's SUBJECTIVE to that person. No need to say it's very existence is subjective, only that it's the subjective individual who will either like it or not. So there is a concrete definition, it's BLUR.

See above, you misunderstood my words. I never said you could tell how much blur a pic has because it has bokeh. It can be a 1 on the scale, a 9 on the scale of blur, but there does have to be SOME. So my definition works perfectly and is the same for everyone, everywhere, at any time. Bokeh is any blurred area of a frame because of dof on a subject not being deep enough to put all the frame in focus. That's definite, or a definition. No such thing as a definition unless it's definite, I don't think. So the existence of bokeh is NOT SUBJECTIVE, only it's appeal to any individual, subjective mind. The only subjective part is whether you like the bokeh/blur that exists, not it's very existence.

So if I like the quality and you don't, you say it's not bokeh and I say it is? How does that work?

,

That's because it doesn't, it's just blur. I can find it pleasing and refer to the bokeh I like and you might hate it, but it doesn't give you the right to say IT ISN'T BOKEH, just because you don't like the bokeh/blur. If you are going to tel me that a certain quality IS bokeh, then you should be able to describe that quality to me in a concrete way, or it's not a definition.

No, it might be NICE to one person and NOT to the other. You need to be able to give a real description. Blur is that description.

It's the subjective INDIVIDUAL opinion, that's the subjective part, not the EXISTENSE of bokeh/blur. No need for that to be subjective.

Is there a 'lot of bokeh' in this photo?!
http://www.dpreview.co​m …43101&View=Resu​lts&Rows=4

Is there a lot of blur? If so, YES. Whether you like it or not, whether it appeals to you or not is the SUBJECTIVE PART, not it's actual existence.

Question for guitarjeff: do you distinguish between blur itself, and the subjective quality of that blur, be it pleasant, unpleasant, creamy, harsh, etc.?

I ask because in your writing it seems at times that you consider "bokeh" to be a synonym for blur, viz:

"I can like ANY blur I want to, and to me, it's bokeh"
"But BLUR is still blur, and it's still bokeh"
"if there is blur, it CAN BE LIKED and referred to as bokeh"
"I can refer properly to any blur I like as bokeh with the qualities I like, then any blur is bokeh. The two don't exist alone because anyone can call any blur, bokeh."
"if you have bokeh...",
etc.

Perhaps the nub of the issue is exemplified by your writing:
"ANY blur can be considered bokeh".

Here, you equate the two, while for many or most of us here, the corresponding statement would be:
"ANY blur can be HAVE bokeh".

Indeed, it MUST have bokeh; it MUST have a character. It may be thought nice or otherwise, beauty being in the eye of the beholder and all

Again, bokeh is a characteristic of blur. All blur has it, but it is not itself blur.

By analogy, all (non-transparent) matter has colour, but matter is not colour. The colour of any particular matter may be described in various terms, but it is a concept separate from the matter itself.

xarqi wrote in post #16435211
Since bokeh is a subjective characteristic of blur, it can only have a value if there is blur present. That does not make the blur itself "bokeh".

Saying bokeh is a "Subjective Characteristic", is saying that there is nothing real called bokeh at all. The subjective part is whether you personally like the blur caused by smaller depth of field. A quality is a description of an aspect of something. Qualities, or aspects of something are real, not subjective. Saying something is subjective is not a description of a quality. In almost every definition of the word quality I can find, it is a description of a real aspect, not a value jusdgement that might exoist to one and might not to another. It's meaningless to say that a picture has bokeh for one person and not for another. If anything can be bokeh, then there really isn't any specific thing called bokeh. You are trying to say that simply contemplating something subjectively (whether you like a certain blurred area or not) IS a thing called bokeh.

The thing called bokeh (BLUR) is a descriptive quality, and it describes BLUR due to not having enough dof to make all things in a frame in focus. Whether you like it or not, that's the subjective part, that contemplation is not a QUALITY or description, that's subjective.

i agree. We use the word bokeh simply because people think it sounds cool or good. It is still blur. Bokeh sounds more sophisticated and artsy, but that doesn't change the fact that it is still blur.

Then describe the qualities of that something. A THING is not subjective. A contemplation about whether you like something IS SUBJECTIVE, not the existence of that thing itself.