One of the two most misunderstood terms in photography are "bokeh" and "high key". Just as "high key" does not mean "white background", "bokeh" does not mean "out of focus background". I see several of us trying to grasp what exactly it means, so I offer this bit from the Wikipedia article:
Bokeh has been defined as "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light".
The key phrase here is "out-of-focus points of light". A homogenous blurry background is not what bokeh is all about, it is about how the lens renders those point sources, which could be specular highlights (points of light reflected from shiny surfaces) or actual light sources like Christmas tree lights or candles. When I captured this image of the gull five years ago, it was with the intention of creating this bokeh effect, which works pretty well with the Canon 400mm f/5.6 lens. Some of my lenses have circular iris elements, which make for even nicer bokeh, but the eight straight blades of this lens do make a nice effect as well.
"It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart, and head." - Henri Cartier Bresson
It seems to me that there is a wide range of definitions of bokeh. The one you quoted is the most narrow definition. Some people define bokeh as any blurred bg, which is too broad and loose a definition for me. I take a middle approach, which is also included in the Wikipedia article from which you quoted: "bokeh is not limited to highlights; blur occurs in all out-of-focus regions of the image.... [It is] the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image produced by a lens." Hence circles of color in the bg, which are not exactly produced by light sources (such as in your image) but produced by reflected light, is also bokeh.
I agree wth Anita. The translation of the original Japanese is, as always in these cases, hard to pin down in English but seems to refer to a 'haze' of sorts and has widely been used to refer to the quality of the out of focus areas as opposed to it being simply how far it is 'out of focus'. I think the key part of hte Wikipedia definition is where it says 'It has been defined as...' which suggests some ambiguity.
Bokeh is a constantly misused term, and that is one of my pet peeves. It is, as Kerry said, the quality of OOF areas. It is not to be confused with DOF. It is a quality of the lens, not the photographer's choice of DOF. You don't create it, you buy it, with a quality lens. Colloquial misuse doesn't re-define it.
Kerry, great example of bokeh. Also good discussion. And a good point by Mike, hard to pin down something that means different things to different people.
But if one of those "meanings" is a misuse of the term, no matter how common it has become, or how many "big names" misuse it, that makes it easier to pin down....
Sorry for the intrusion -- I'll get off the soapbox now. The work all you folks do is so wonderful it deserves the proper terminology!
I agree that this is a good discussion. I also agree that the definition can be nebulous and hard to pin down. It seems to be pretty much universally accepted that the word comes from the Japanese word "boke", which means blur. But the "uh" part of the new word refers to the quality of the OOF areas. If you read a bunch of articles about the subject though, they ultimately start talking about the iris of the lens and how it renders point sources. If you think about it, this is really the only way to evaluate that quality of a particular lens, as an amorphous blurry background doesn't have any definition to showcase that quality. Does that make any sense? So I agree that bokeh can just mean "blurry background", but virtually every online source talks about the blades in the iris and how they render OOF point sources. I had to chuckle the other day when I read a Facebook expert declare that OOF backgrounds was a "gimmick" and had no place in REAL photography. I'm not likely to start shooting portraits of people at f/32 to achieve "real" photography.
I would like to mention that I really appreciate this kind of discussion here, as we have very little of it and I think it benefits all of us to talk like this.
"It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart, and head." - Henri Cartier Bresson
I agree that the lens makes a difference in the type and quality of bokeh, and, that bokeh means more than a blurred bg. As I reread Kerry's original post, his definition would fit with my definition, which is that the points of light need not be limited to "sources" of light, which is how I was initially, and erroneously, interpreting his definition, but can include reflected light.
I do wish I were home and could post a photo. Another time.
I too was looking at Kerry's OP as referring to specular sources of light, especially as he used specular highlights and christmas tree lights as examples. But you rlast comment has made me wonder what you mean by 'point sources of light'
they ultimately start talking about the iris of the lens and how it renders point sources
IMO only because any discussion of optics is described using point sources as a way of breaking down the 'image' into its component parts and understand how the lens renders them. Only then can you show things like lens diagrams that make any sense to the reader. So they will assume, for example, that a leaf is made up of a gazillion point sources of light, even though to the human eye is is one massive surface. Yet from your comments I quoted above this is not what you meant by 'point sources'?
I have in the past and for my own amusement taken images with my 100mm prime, 70-300 and 70-200L lens all set at 100mm, same aperture etc to see what the effect is on the background and each lens renders them differently. They are all OOF to the same degree, but the effect they give is quite different and all are referred to as 'bokeh'. So I agree with you that "A homogenous blurry background is not what bokeh is all about" but that is quite different to saying 'it is only about point sources'.
The most times 'bokeh' is used is when people see a that homogenous background (sometimes referred to as 'creamy') but that does not exclude its use to refer to other qualities: for example my when photographing birds with stalks of grass in the background, the stalks can often be rendered in quite an ugly way depending on the lens being used and in discussions it is expressed as 'I prefer the bokeh for lens 'A' as shorthand for 'I prefer the way Lens 'A' renders out of focus areas'.
But the "uh" part of the new word refers to the quality of the OOF areas.
I'm not sure where you get that from. As far as I can tell you are translating a idiogram into western characters and when different people (not experts in linguistics) see the 'e' or 'eh' on the end they wonder how to pronounce it and take a flying guess so some people say 'boke' and in 'poke' some pronounce it 'bock-ay' or 'Bok-uh'.
Mike said, "They are all OOF to the same degree, but the effect they give is quite different ..."
Exactly -- bokeh is the esthetic quality of those differences in otherwise "equally" OOF areas, with quality being judged as smoother is better. The key concept is that bokeh is different from DOF. It is a highly-regarded quality of the best lenses, but none are perfect. It is generally most obvious as the light source becomes smaller and more defined, because it is affecting tonal transitions.
Theme: What is Bokeh?
Originally Posted by Hazel Grant
I'm not likely to start shooting portraits of people at f/32 to achieve "real" photography.
