Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

About Bokeh

bokehtests.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–89 of 89 posts

Re: About Bokeh

#81

Post by blago »

mc32 wrote: post #80
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…

One thing I notice is when people get into photography bokeh is one of the first things that they want to emulate (another was HDR). But once they know the basic rules[1] of photography well enough to break them, they tend to view bokeh as that puppy-love attraction and now they are on to more serious photography. That is to say, bokeh is sometimes used as a crutch before people learn the basic rules and then learn h…

Exactly my experience! This is especially true for people who are into street photography. I've come full circle and I find myself looking for the sharpest picture across the whole frame.

Aesthetics aside, I think the reason we reach out for bokeh first is that it's an easy way to isolate subjects and obscure clutter. That gives your photography an instant boost. A lot easier than using composition, timing, and relying on luck.

Re: About Bokeh

#82

Post by month13 »

__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…

The watercolour effect from the de-noiser in iOS results in watercolour-esque patterns in the final image, and washes away most of the fine detail at 1:1.

FWIW, I have an iPhone X. The watercolour trend started around the iPhone 5s, IIRC.

Re: About Bokeh

#83

Post by jrobn »

mc32 wrote: post #80
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…

One thing I notice is when people get into photography bokeh is one of the first things that they want to emulate (another was HDR). But once they know the basic rules[1] of photography well enough to break them, they tend to view bokeh as that puppy-love attraction and now they are on to more serious photography. That is to say, bokeh is sometimes used as a crutch before people learn the basic rules and then learn h…

It's also this quasi-metric for "professional quality" so first timers tend to spend the money to acquire these fast lenses in hopes it will suddenly make them a quality photographer.

Re: About Bokeh

#84

Post by kabouseng »

vilhelm_s wrote: post #77
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…

The "bad" pattern he calls out is not exactly the Trioplan soap-bubble style, it's the thing you get from a mirror telephoto lens. In Trioplan images[1], the light intensity smoothly increases towards the edge of the disk of confusion, and creates a sharp edge. I agree that this looks kind of nice, although it's a quite specialized effect. In mirror lens images[2], the "disk" of confusion is actually a ring, with two…

>>This actually matters a lot, because other than this, mirrors are superior to refractive glass lenses in almost every way

No. Reflective designs (mirrors) are usually of the casigrain type, and casigrain designs offer very narrow but limited zoom range field of views. This is at the cost of obscuration of the secondary mirror. Note that there are still refractive elements (lenses) in a casigrain design. This very narrow fov is why such designs are prefered in telescopes and other narrow fov application areas.

The majority of lens designs are refractive and this should give you an indication that a statement such as mirrors are superior to refractive designs simply is not true.

Edit - added application areas

Re: About Bokeh

#85

Post by unicornporn »

erkserkserks wrote: post #76
unicornporn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impossible to say because sample[1] is highly compressed and 800 pixels high (including a white border). [1] https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3Sm2XHss0lA/XffZ95s_KjI/AAAAAAAAF...

Here’s the full size album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/cwaKemRDusTK5W6SA

Still not full-res and unfortunately the first two samples[1] I opened shows that it's still crap and can't handle fine detail/hair. Many people have hair.

[1] https://imgur.com/a/MXCeYaU

Re: About Bokeh

#86

Post by virtualritz »

vilhelm_s wrote: post #77
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…

The "bad" pattern he calls out is not exactly the Trioplan soap-bubble style, it's the thing you get from a mirror telephoto lens. In Trioplan images[1], the light intensity smoothly increases towards the edge of the disk of confusion, and creates a sharp edge. I agree that this looks kind of nice, although it's a quite specialized effect. In mirror lens images[2], the "disk" of confusion is actually a ring, with two…

I didn’t say the author was talking about the Trioplan. I only said the Trioplan’s Bokeh shape would be an example that he purports as undesirable.

As a photographer I don't care so much what optical design choice gave rise to an artifact (that I want to exploit artistically).

Re: About Bokeh

#87

Post by criddell »

unicornporn wrote: post #34
criddell wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever bokeh is mentioned in /r/pics, they are usually talking about the blurred background in an image that has shallow depth of field, not any particular quality of light in the image. Drives me nuts, but not worth arguing about.

What exactly drives you nuts? That they shouldn't talk about the subjective quality of the blur, but rather the quality of light?

Lots of people think bokeh is just a blurred background.

Re: About Bokeh

#88

Post by penagwin »

jiberius wrote: post #29
penagwin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The delay after taking long exposures is caused by the camera taking a dark frame with the same exposure length as your actual image. When you take a long exposure, the sensor can exhibit noise caused by "hot pixels". The dark frame is taken with the shutter closed so that the camera can get an image of just the hot pixel noise, which it then subtracts from your actual long exposure. You can turn this off in the sett…

Oh thanks for letting me know! I have an A6000, so that makes sense!

Re: About Bokeh

#89

Post by unicornporn »

criddell wrote: post #87
unicornporn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly drives you nuts? That they shouldn't talk about the subjective quality of the blur, but rather the quality of light?

Lots of people think bokeh is just a blurred background.

...and that drives me nuts too.
Post reply on HN