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About Bokeh

bokehtests.com

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Re: About Bokeh

#61

Post by capn_cabbage »

virtualritz wrote: post #60

I am surprised about how biased this article is in assigning attributes like ‘good’, ‘bad’ or ‘perfect’ to Bokeh shapes. You can talk about this in these terms solely from an optical engineering pov. The shape of Bokeh is often why a lens get picked for a shot. What the author calls ‘bad Bokeh’ other people call ‘soap bubble Bokeh’ (google for it) and they are willing to cash out [2] for owning a lens that can produc…

Sentences 3 and 4 in the article seem to excuse this. Is there further information that I may be missing regarding why the bias is still a problem?

Re: About Bokeh

#62

Post by IneffablePigeon »

anamexis wrote: post #55
tpolzer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand that's correct. On the other hand you could completely avoid that if you did long exposures the way a Google Pixel (2+ I think) does it (in software): Take lots of short exposures and fuse them. If the device is handheld you get variability in positioning for free, if it's on a tripod, it will automatically wiggle the OIS slightly to achieve the same effect.

It seems like movement would be effective for averaging out random noise, but the described process isn’t for eliminating random noise, it’s for eliminating persistent hotter pixels on the sensor.

Indeed, and in fact the pixel does exactly the same dark frame trick to identify hot pixels. I don't know that it takes as long though - perhaps it's hidden by the fact you can keep doing other things while the photo is processing.

Re: About Bokeh

#63

Post by tpolzer »

IneffablePigeon wrote: post #62
anamexis wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like movement would be effective for averaging out random noise, but the described process isn’t for eliminating random noise, it’s for eliminating persistent hotter pixels on the sensor.

Indeed, and in fact the pixel does exactly the same dark frame trick to identify hot pixels. I don't know that it takes as long though - perhaps it's hidden by the fact you can keep doing other things while the photo is processing.

It cannot do the same thing as an a6000, as it lacks a physical shutter.

Re: About Bokeh

#64

Post by twic »

thyselius wrote: post #39

Someone should mention the oval shaped, very cinematic, Anamorphic bokeh. Bokeh is not just the shape of blurry small light sources, but also changes the quality of any out of focus region, since the blur is doubled vertically compared to horizontally. A good read on the subject with images https://www.provideocoalition.com/three-lenses-a-look-at-bok...

I cringe whenever i see that oval bokeh in a film. It's so jarring. I can't believe a competent cinematographer would ever allow it in their shot.

Re: About Bokeh

#65

Post by abruzzi »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #35
droitbutch wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not sure why I'm getting downvoted here for simply pointing out the author defines his definition of Bokeh in the 1st paragraph.

I would guess that people think that the author's preferred definition doesn't preclude other people from having different definitions. You seem to assume it does, at least in the context of this discussion, and that assumption is noxious to the people who are downvoting you.

I'd add that while the Author is correct--bokeh is a property of images, not lenses--its not materially different that how most photographers understand the term. While a lot of photographers may say things like "that lens has great bokeh", they don't think that bokeh is some quality in the lens. They are just shortening an idea lke "this lens produces images with great bokeh." It is a lazy way of rephrasing it, but I have never met a photographer that thinks bokeh is not referring to the image.

Re: About Bokeh

#66

Post by crazygringo »

twic wrote: post #64
thyselius wrote: post #39

Someone should mention the oval shaped, very cinematic, Anamorphic bokeh. Bokeh is not just the shape of blurry small light sources, but also changes the quality of any out of focus region, since the blur is doubled vertically compared to horizontally. A good read on the subject with images https://www.provideocoalition.com/three-lenses-a-look-at-bok...

I cringe whenever i see that oval bokeh in a film. It's so jarring. I can't believe a competent cinematographer would ever allow it in their shot.

Competent cinematography is about artistry and emotion, and whatever technical standards are necessary to achieve that. And everything with technical issues about tradeoffs. Movies are chock-full of tradeoffs.

Oval bokeh is... hardly noticeable to anyone except professional photographers, and also isn't inherently "bad", it's just different, and has its own personality.

If your standards are so perfectionist, I have a hard time believing you find any of Hollywood's cinematographers -- whether blockbuster or indie -- up to your competent standards. ;)

Re: About Bokeh

#67

Post by jake-low »

murgindrag wrote: post #43

Shape is important. I find that some lenses have a different look on-axis versus off-axis, either leading to ugly smearing, or pretty twirly bokeh. The aesthetic also depends on image. Nice crisp circles of light are sometimes nicer than a Gaussian blur. As someone pointed out, mirror lenses have their uses too. But there are lenses with just bad bokeh too.

> I find that some lenses have a different look on-axis versus off-axis, either leading to ugly smearing, or pretty twirly bokeh.

This is indeed pretty interesting. It seems like double-Gauss lens designs like the Zeiss Planar and Biotar are especially prone to this kind of distortion. There's a Russian copy of the 58mm Biotar called the Helios 44 that's popular on eBay for this reason (lots of people use an adapter to put it on a MFT camera and shoot video with it).

Re: About Bokeh

#68

Post by [deleted] »

gnopgnip wrote: post #11
behringer wrote: post #6

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…

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

[deleted]

Re: About Bokeh

#69

Post by scarejunba »

virtualritz wrote: post #60

I am surprised about how biased this article is in assigning attributes like ‘good’, ‘bad’ or ‘perfect’ to Bokeh shapes. You can talk about this in these terms solely from an optical engineering pov. The shape of Bokeh is often why a lens get picked for a shot. What the author calls ‘bad Bokeh’ other people call ‘soap bubble Bokeh’ (google for it) and they are willing to cash out [2] for owning a lens that can produc…

> Two key terms in this definition are SUBJECTIVE and IMAGE. One cannot measure bokeh, as it is something that may be pleasing to one person and not another. I have my opinion of what makes for good bokeh, and, as I own this site, I get to define good and bad Bokeh for the purposes here!

And every time he mentions it he uses those caveats.

> You may have your own idea of what good bokeh is, but this site will be evaluating lenses based on MY opinions. And lets face it, there are actually times when BAD bokeh really works for a shot, but that is usually for people who have a whole lot more artistic talent than I do.

Re: About Bokeh

#70

Post by alistairSH »

__jal wrote: post #45
StillBored wrote: post #2

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.

> And for most people it seems to work satisfactorily Most people apparently don't look at their pictures. The "enhanced" photos I've gotten from the Iphone for the last few models have just been getting worse. They look OK if you don't look too closely, but then they're just wrong . Blurry details on the same focal plane as crisp ones, crappy details with translucency, hair or anything else that confuses the "foregr…

Same experience here. My guess is most people view their photos on their phones, via Instagram or Facebook. Rarely are photos looked at in full size on a high quality monitor.

I have no intention of giving up my Olympus mirrorless system. I'll probably add at least one more lens to my collection next year - I've been relying on my 12-40 f2.8 for portraits, but I'm liking what I've read about the Sigma 56 f1.4.

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