Bokeh at different focus distances 85L vs 35L

And shouldn't I be asking you those questions? You are the one saying that something is real just because you assess it.

How much quality, and what kind of quality constitutes bokeh and who gets to decide it? please answer.

guitarjeff wrote in post #16443158
No, jjust think it's funny when folks like a word because it sounds cool and then they put a gibberish definition on it that sounds cool but doesn't mean anything.

How high is the sky?
What are the units of beauty?
What of Heisenberg and Gödel?
How many concertos equate to a symphony?

These are of course rhetorical, but rhetoric seems to be more important to you than that other subjective (and uncertain) concept, truth, so they may stimulate some cogitation.

Or just more rhetoric.

Now explain the parameters of what the quality needs to be for the blur to be bokeh? pretty please? how much quality, what is the quality, and who decides it?

I've already read that way before this thread and it's gibberish now just as it always has been. Doesn't matter who comes up with the gibberish, it's still gibberish.

In his 1996 article, Merklinger stated, "Japanese apparently refer to the

quality of the out-of-focus image as 'bokeh'." Later in the same article he amplifies, "Bokeh, the quality of the out-of-focus image, is determined by the set of brushes: the circles of confusion characteristic of the lens, its aperture and how far out-of-focus it is." © Harold M. Merklinger, Halifax, Canada 1996.

The same issue of Photo Techniques also included an article by Oren Grad. Some of the salient points and terminology from Oren Grad‘s article:

•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.

guitarjeff wrote in post #16443176
Now explain the parameters of what the quality needs to be for the blur to be bokeh? pretty please? how much quality, what is the quality, and who decides it?

You sure are having one heck of a time understanding things that have been properly described time and time again in this thread.

Blur is NEVER "bokeh". Bokeh is a word to use to describe the qualities of the blur (usually accompanied by one or more adjectives such as ugly, smooth, great, etc.) in an image. Different viewers of the image are very likely to assign different adjectives when describing their opinion of the out-of-focus blur in an image.

Please stop your agitation that has no apparent valid reason behind it.

SkipD wrote in post #16443198
Please stop your agitation that has no apparent valid reason behind it.

Of course validity is subjective, therefore unreal.

Wilt wrote in post #16443114
Nope, 'bokeh' is the quality of the background blur which lies outside the DOF zone.

Then give us some adjectives to describe it with.

Look. I totally accept your definition of bokeh. But I have sneaking sympathy with GJ's frustration here, despite his interminable bloody ranting.

Bokeh is intended to be, to OOF highlights, what timbre is to sound - it aims to describe its unquantifiable/immeasu​rable qualities. Pitch and volume can be measured, but the quality of a sound can only be described by reference to, for example, a waveform or another sound.

The problem with applying the same logic to out-of-focus-highlights is that it is comparatively a very narrow subject. It's just not as complex as sound, so you soon run out of adjectives (and in my case, the will to live) when trying to describe it in any meaningful way.

And that's my problem. In its purest definition, bokeh aims to describe something as narrow as the quality of the black pepper in a spaghetti sauce. It's pretty important in the balance of the final product, but it's not something that requires its own word...

sub·jec·tive

1.
existing in the mind; belonging to the thinking subject rather than to the object of thought (opposed to objective ).

4.
Philosophy . relating to or of the nature of an object as it is known in the mind as distinct from a thing in itself.
5.
relating to properties or specific conditions of the mind as distinguished from general or universal experience.

Something doesn't exist just because you assess it, just because you find you like the qualities it has. The only thing that is subjective is you deciding if you like it, not it's very existence.


re·al
1 [ree-uhl, reel] Show IPA
adjective
1.
true; not merely ostensible, nominal, or apparent: the real reason for an act.
2.
existing or occurring as fact; actual rather than imaginary, ideal, or fictitious: a story taken from real life.
3.
being an actual thing; having objective existence; not imaginary: The events you will see in the film are real and not just made up.

genuine; not counterfeit, artificial, or imitation; authentic: a real antique; a real diamond; real silk.

On another note, how do you pronounce "bokeh"

I pronounce it bow - kah

I've heard it pronounced bow - kay

Bow-kah.

JohnB57 wrote in post #16443286
Bow-kah.

To quote the guy who coined the current Anglicized spelling back 13 years ago, Mike Johnston:

"[It was] one of the few issues of that magazine that sold out. My own contribution was…er, a letter. I decided that people too readily mispronounced 'boke', so I added an “h” to the word in our articles, and voilá, 'bokeh' was born [...]
Actually, to be precise, what I had noticed was not just that people mispronounced the word as it was commonly spelled, but that they had a tendency to ridicule it, making lame jokes about it as if it rhymed with 'smoke' or 'toke' or 'joke'. Actually, even spelled boke, it is properly pronounced with bo as in bone and ke as in Kenneth, with equal stress on either syllable."

JohnB57 wrote in post #16443248
Then give us some adjectives to describe it with.

Look. I totally accept your definition of bokeh. But I have sneaking sympathy with GJ's frustration here, despite his interminable bloody ranting.

Bokeh is intended to be, to OOF highlights, what timbre is to sound - it aims to describe its unquantifiable/immeasu​rable qualities. Pitch and volume can be measured, but the quality of a sound can only be described by reference to, for example, a waveform or another sound.

The problem with applying the same logic to out-of-focus-highlights is that it is comparatively a very narrow subject. It's just not as complex as sound, so you soon run out of adjectives (and in my case, the will to live) when trying to describe it in any meaningful way.

And that's my problem. In its purest definition, bokeh aims to describe something as narrow as the quality of the black pepper in a spaghetti sauce. It's pretty important in the balance of the final product, but it's not something that requires its own word...

I provided a link to pictures of some generic types of bokeh, earlier in this thread already. As a courtesy for the terminally lazy (I tend to be kind to the terminally ill) here is that link again
http://www.kenrockwell​.com/tech/bokeh.htm

I have never heard adjectival descriptions, I have heard descriptions of similarity to other things...

• 'onion ring' bokeh (concentric bright rings)
  
• 'donut' bokeh (single bright outer ring)
  
• 'uniformly dense disk' bokeh (just as you'd think...a checker gamepiece)
  

When we start arguing about the pronunciation of a made up word with dubious credence, do you not feel we've lost the plot?

SkipD wrote in post #16443198
Please stop your agitation that has no apparent valid reason behind it.

Should I get the Seroquel from my 94 year old mother-in-law and drop some in the mail? (she has dementia and does get agitated at times, and we don't understand her agitation either, although we know Lewy Body Dimentia is the causative disease)

CanonVsNikon wrote in post #16443271
On another note, how do you pronounce "bokeh"

I pronounce it bow - kah

I've heard it pronounced bow - kay

That's how I do as well. The word sounds cool, the way the H comes out at the end, sounds artsy, almost French. I think this is why some folks simply couldn't stand for it to mean blur due to dof, they WANTED it to have a definition worthy of it's artsy, new-age sound.

in the end, if something is subjective, then it exists only in the mind. It isn't real. If i decide the quality ISN'T enough to be bokeh, and someone else looks at the same pic and says it is bokeh, who is right? They are trying to say it both can exist and not exist. I would have no problem if they said it exist only in the mind and isn't a real thing. A real thing has parameters, aspects, and they are observable and the parameters are definable from one to another.

If you say it's the quality as far as quality meaning it's value, then that means you are admitting that something exist in the real world for you to evaluate. If you are saying that the mere act of evaluating how you feel about the blur actually makes bokeh come in to existence, then that is simply gibberish and means nothing because two people could come to the conclusion that it does exist, and doesn't exist in the same photo, which means you are basically saying bokeh is NOTHING at all because it only exist in the mind and can be made up by some and denied by others.

If you mean it is the quality

I provided a link to pictures of some generic types of bokeh, earlier in this thread already. As a courtesy for the terminally lazy (I tend to be kind to the terminally ill) here is that link again
http://www.kenrockwell​.com/tech/bokeh.htm

I just looked again, same gibberish as I saw when I went the first time.

Each one of those things are a description (a quality) of BOKEH that already exists. What some here are trying to claim is that "The quality" is a definable object. Is a "quality" bigger than a bread box? Does it look like a car or truck? Maybe it looks like a lazy Boy recliner, yeah, that's it. Why, I asked my Mom where she got the new recliner, and she said "That's not a recliner, that's a quality"

guitarjeff wrote in post #16443347
That's how I do as well. The word sounds cool, the way the H comes out at the end, sounds artsy, almost French. I think this is why some folks simply couldn't stand for it to mean blur due to dof, they WANTED it to have a definition worthy of it's artsy, new-age sound.

in the end, if something is subjective, then it exists only in the mind. It isn't real. If i decide the quality ISN'T enough to be bokeh, and someone else looks at the same pic and says it is bokeh, who is right? They are trying to say it both can exist and not exist. I would have no problem if they said it exist only in the mind and isn't a real thing. A real thing has parameters, aspects, and they are observable and the parameters are definable from one to another.

If you say it's the quality as far as quality meaning it's value, then that means you are admitting that something exist in the real world for you to evaluate. If you are saying that the mere act of evaluating how you feel about the blur actually makes bokeh come in to existence, then that is simply gibberish and means nothing because two people could come to the conclusion that it does exist, and doesn't exist in the same photo, which means you are basically saying bokeh is NOTHING at all because it only exist in the mind and can be made up by some and denied by others.

If you mean it is the quality

Dude...stop. Nothing is real and exists ONLY in your mind. Prove to me that we both see the color red the same way. Tell me how I can describe what pain feels like to you so that I may be assured we share that experience?

We are stuck inside our on heads. There is no such thing as the reality our brains create for us and we have ZERO evidence that we even share reasonably common perceptions of things. This debate is as old as human thought. You are not covering new ground and in fact its not even interesting. Pointless.

Why fight against feeble efforts of people to reach out of our prisons of loneliness, why struggle to make the impossible task harder?

We might stand in front of a work of art and I might say this image moves me and stirs my emotion. I love it. The bokeh serves the image by isolating the subject and adding a creamy sweet melancholy sensation. It makes my want to cry and gives enduring hope at the same time. MASTERFUL! How does it make you feel?

To which you would reply..... 18 percent of the image surface area is blurred. The rest is in critical focus.

At which point we would part company. I would rather spend my time petting a friendly dog.