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About Bokeh

bokehtests.com

11–20 of 89 posts

Re: About Bokeh

#11

And its all done in software (or ML) with recent phones to get around the lack of a good lenses system. And for most people it seems to work satisfactorily. This has been one of the complaints against camera manufactures recently, that the firmware on the cameras is wildly archaic.

As a photographer I really don't ever want to use the camera software. Even when it's perfect for my application, I want RAW photographs because you have to fix so many other things before you ever get to special effects. You need to crop, color correct, distortion correct, noise correct, exposure correct. Only after that would you ever really want to apply some kind of bokeh filter. The entire reason to use a high e…

You can shoot in raw on most high end smartphones now if you want to do handle that after the fact, but the default used by the camera software does all of that

Re: About Bokeh

#12
As a very nearsighted person, I can see bokeh if I take off my glasses and look at points of light - either nearby small lights, or far-away large lights. Also, when I look at a bright sky through a tree's canopy, the canopy transforms into a breathtaking mosaic of bokeh, which becomes animated if the tree is swaying in the wind. Can people with normal vision experience this?

Re: About Bokeh

#13

And its all done in software (or ML) with recent phones to get around the lack of a good lenses system. And for most people it seems to work satisfactorily. This has been one of the complaints against camera manufactures recently, that the firmware on the cameras is wildly archaic.

If we're talking about non-point and shoot cameras, such as DSLRs or Mirrorless Cameras that cost $500+ such as my Sony A6000, I absolutely DO NOT want post-processing done on my camera.

Portrait mode on my iPhone 7+ looks okay at a glance, but thinks like hair, wires, and twigs are TERRIBLE on closer inspection.

Not to say the software couldn't be improved. For example, after taking a 20 second exposure, I have to wait another ~15 seconds before I can take another photo. I'd love for that processing time to be cut down.

Re: About Bokeh

#14

And its all done in software (or ML) with recent phones to get around the lack of a good lenses system. And for most people it seems to work satisfactorily. This has been one of the complaints against camera manufactures recently, that the firmware on the cameras is wildly archaic.

As a photographer I really don't ever want to use the camera software. Even when it's perfect for my application, I want RAW photographs because you have to fix so many other things before you ever get to special effects. You need to crop, color correct, distortion correct, noise correct, exposure correct. Only after that would you ever really want to apply some kind of bokeh filter. The entire reason to use a high e…

> You need to crop, color correct, distortion correct, noise correct, exposure correct. Only after that would you ever really want to apply some kind of bokeh filter.

Modern phones already do all that - and seemingly in that order.

As a photographer, what I find lacking are the lenses. You can only squeeze so much light from the relatively tiny lenses. Perfect recent example was kids Christmas play. Sitting back 25+ meters, with somewhat dim lighting and fast moving kids, I could see the other parents with their smartphones and tablets getting very poor photo's and vids - whereas my Nikon had zoom galore and excellent clear focus.

Physics matters.

Re: About Bokeh

#15
post #5

One of my favorite Bokeh lenses is the Nikon 500mm reflex telephoto lens. The "Mak" style with a rear primary mirror and a front secondary works a lot like common compact telescopes. The Bokeh is tricky to apply, it's a fixed zoom telephoto lens so your subject must be at least 10 meters or so a way and it's hard to handhold, but the "donut" aperture of the lens makes for some very cool (or weird depending on your ta…

Your definition conflicts with the author's. 1st paragraph: >as I own this site, I get to define good and bad Bokeh for the purposes here! The other key term is “image.” Bokeh is a property of IMAGES, not a property of LENSES.

And yet more than half of the page is about lenses.

Re: About Bokeh

#16

As a very nearsighted person, I can see bokeh if I take off my glasses and look at points of light - either nearby small lights, or far-away large lights. Also, when I look at a bright sky through a tree's canopy, the canopy transforms into a breathtaking mosaic of bokeh, which becomes animated if the tree is swaying in the wind. Can people with normal vision experience this?

I can if I squint. I have glasses, though.

Re: About Bokeh

#18
post #5

One of my favorite Bokeh lenses is the Nikon 500mm reflex telephoto lens. The "Mak" style with a rear primary mirror and a front secondary works a lot like common compact telescopes. The Bokeh is tricky to apply, it's a fixed zoom telephoto lens so your subject must be at least 10 meters or so a way and it's hard to handhold, but the "donut" aperture of the lens makes for some very cool (or weird depending on your ta…

Your definition conflicts with the author's. 1st paragraph: >as I own this site, I get to define good and bad Bokeh for the purposes here! The other key term is “image.” Bokeh is a property of IMAGES, not a property of LENSES.

The shape of the bokeh is given by the shape of the aperture, so it is also a property of the lenses.

The specific word is related to the aesthetic quality of the effect in context, but that doesn’t mean it is truly independent of the lens.

Re: About Bokeh

#19

And its all done in software (or ML) with recent phones to get around the lack of a good lenses system. And for most people it seems to work satisfactorily. This has been one of the complaints against camera manufactures recently, that the firmware on the cameras is wildly archaic.

If we're talking about non-point and shoot cameras, such as DSLRs or Mirrorless Cameras that cost $500+ such as my Sony A6000, I absolutely DO NOT want post-processing done on my camera. Portrait mode on my iPhone 7+ looks okay at a glance, but thinks like hair, wires, and twigs are TERRIBLE on closer inspection. Not to say the software couldn't be improved. For example, after taking a 20 second exposure, I have to w…

I mean, you are using an iPhone 7, iirc that’s the first iPhone to implement portrait mode. The processing time on my iPhone 11 that I just got is minimal. I upgraded from an iPhone 6S so I’m not sure what the processing time was like on iPhones with portrait mode prior to the 11 models though.

As well, who’s to say what Apple could do when given an image from a high end camera sensor instead of the tiny one in an iPhone?

And lastly, why not just enable power users to turn it off? Sure you can say manpower would be better directed at other problems, but who cares if post processing capabilities are on the camera if you can turn it off? Those who want it use it. Those who don’t don’t.

Re: About Bokeh

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a photographer I really don't ever want to use the camera software. Even when it's perfect for my application, I want RAW photographs because you have to fix so many other things before you ever get to special effects. You need to crop, color correct, distortion correct, noise correct, exposure correct. Only after that would you ever really want to apply some kind of bokeh filter. The entire reason to use a high e…

It's not the software that holds back phone cameras. It's the literal size and shape of the sensors and lens. You can already shoot RAW on a phone, but putting Photoshop on the phone won't solve the lack of depth of field inherent to the lens and sensor setup.

Does the RAW format save the kind of information that the software uses to guess at bokeh (depth sensors, multiple lenses, multiple shots, defocused pixels)? Or is there some other format that could save all that info, so you could really use the phone but do the processing later?
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