The nifty fifty bokeh "problems"

I took it with film, but I will hook it up tonight and post them tommorow.

Cool. I've wanted to putz with cutouts, but just don't have the time.

I couldn't find it, but here is an example of something quick I made..I didn't have anything good to shoot, so I present you my out of focus modem. I think my star was too big, that why the ends are cut off, but who cares.

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The 50mm f/1.8 MkII can produce some ugly bokeh indeed in some occasions :

yeah, it turned your portrait of the lovely girl into a multicoloured hairy beast - yeah those 3 extra blades really make a difference!!

what is bokeh?

No.

But the human's eye focuses on the sharp objects of the picture. The bokeh is sharp and therefore distracts, thus making the overall picture less dramatic and less interesting.

If we look it up in the Acme dictionary, it means the audible sound of a roadrunner bird. "Meh, meh."

---Bob Gross---

It's sort of a Japanese term for the unfocused blur that sets the mood of the background. To some, it is the shape of the points of light. To others, it is the density of the points of light. But it sets a mood to the background.

It is often created by the structure of the diaphragm of the lens aperture. So, some good lenses are known to help create "good bokeh" and mirror lenses are known to help create "weird bokeh."

---Bob Gross---

The out of focus area in photo - good bokeh is smooth, natural, off focus colors blend without oddities and bright spots do not blur as donuts or clearly multifaceted circles. Bokeh changes with aperture - this change can be read in MTF graphs.

And bokeh is not only background blur. Actually even more important is to have good bokeh on foreground

Here are couple of examples of good bokeh in front and back (85/1.2L, upper photo f/1.2 and lower f/3.2)

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That's interesting!!!
I would like to see the results of a more expensive lens on the same thing.

Same result..............

oh, what is the point of then?

dependent on lens quality and such, you can get creamy smooth bokeh to bokeh where circles turn into multifaceted shapes and such. sorta like in those old movies where they just unfocus and it turns into a hexagon or something.

you want it smooth so you draw attention to the subject vs the weird distortions in the background.


However, another form of photography is intentional blurring of background such as with pictures in cityscapes. what photographers do is just zoom in as close as they can with nothing in the camera, and the background blurs up and gives you these interesting shapes and stuff. it's really cool. too bad i don't quite have an example for you.

Something else you might want to consider is that with a larger aperture lens, the bokeh is increased back and foregrounds. the areas just become so much more blurred than before, it's also more pronounced with regular lenses when you focus up close because the focal plane is vastly reduced.

I think bokeh is way more interesting with Canon's TS-E lenses.

the 90mm would offer some interesting work because you can modify that plane of focus to go across your image diagonally and stuff and that really leads to some creative work as your medium is much more flexible. then again, for ~1000 new, it better help you out.

yes, i know exactly what he is saying - check out the massive pentagonal highlights at the back right. i totally agree the boken is harsh and undesireable.