Question

As I stated, Roy is a professor that I work with. I'm guessing you do not watch Top Gear.

No, I don't watch Top Gear and may the Lord forgive me I checked their web site and I'm still none the wiser. I assume this Professor Roy is some academic they wheel in to spout science?

Does it show that I don't like Top Gear?

Mike

You're quite right since bokeh is a clear part how smooth the background looks but it depends on what you all mean with that word "bokeh"
Colour isn't for example a part of bokeh.

It isn't scientific, the word bokeh was intented to be used for something else but has grown in the recent years just to mean the whole out of focus blur which is wrong in my eyes.

In a way we are talking about the focus blur everywhere but only an aspect of it.

It's a bit like when we talk about an object were for example bokeh only means colour but somehow it also means now the form and the size of the object and how heavy it is.

Bokeh still has the scientific meaning of just the light distribution, that the unknowing or the lack for a word for the matter has change the word doesn't change the scientific meaning I believe.
So who is wrong and who is right?

Now here comes the challenge for Pete, how do you let know if you mean the scientific/intented meaning or the new general meaning of the word bokeh since they both almost mean the same afterall.

- the bokeh is pleasant... hmm what meaning of bokeh do i mean?
- the highlight bokeh is pleasant... still not very clear, the highlights consist of a shape and that isn't meant by bokeh.
- the out of focus blur is pleasant... yeah that's clear but didn't use the word bokeh.

I don't see a way that the bokeh with the current two meanings can be used together, they are too much a like.
I rather use OOF blur since that's very clear and only two letters more.

By all means you can suggest a refinement of the term, but how many people have seen your comments, and how many all over the world are using the term bokeh in the aesthetic sense?

I'm pretty sure now that if I talk to a group of photographers about bokeh then they will be expecting me to be discussing the aesthetic qualities of the out of focus areas in an image.

But things can change. As an example, in the 1940s and 1950s you will find photographic writers quite happily calling what we now know as depth of field by the term depth of focus.

Since then it has been drummed into one and all that depth of field refers to how much in the scene is within the boundaries of acceptable sharpness, whilst depth of focus refers to how much leeway there is in placing the film plane or sensor in the area where the lens focuses that image.

So by all means promote the scientific definition you suggest, but I suspect you will have a hard battle to persuade thw world that bokeh is anything else but the aesthetic.

You could refer to a specific definition on a website, for example, like you have done yourself. Not everyone else is going to be so specific, though...

That's good, but the issue is that "bokeh" is already widely used "wrongly" by millions of people, according to your view. You have little chance of changing that.

I agree it's a problem that the word is used so vaguely and subjectively, and personally, I'm already cautious about the whole subject, and rarely even mention bokeh or OOF blur.

Have I missed something George?

According to the intended view that is and still if you google "what is bokeh" the explanation is still the intended one.

So it's the case of the unknowing and quite hard to understand defination of the word.
Still bokeh and bokeh have almost the same meaning and effect 90% of the time.

This is by many called an unpleasant bokeh



While this one is already a lot better.



And is this what we want to see.



As you can see the distribution of the light (bokeh) plays a major part in how pleasant the blur is.
So overall the term "Bokeh" is used correctly without understanding the finer details of it.
Still on a photographic form when someone ask what bokeh is... should we explain the global meaning or the more detialed and intedted meaning?

I love these arguments...that is argument in the "true" intellectual sense, not an all out row!

I don't have the knowledge to add anything constructive, but I've got two things to say.
a) Oggy...Love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!

b) Stephan, your example of saying car to mean ball. That in itself shows how words can end up having a different meaning to its original, intended use.
By "car", I assume you mean automobile. Not "Carriage", of which "car" is an abreviation. The carriage referred to would have originally been a horseless carriage.

So, IMHO, bokeh may actually have originated with the meaning you suggest, but may evolve (if it hasn't already), to mean the whole OOF area behind the main subject.

Stefan wrote:
As I suggested a couple of pages ago already.
When someone asks you the time, just give it to him. Don't explain him how the watch works.

Martin.

It would be helpful to that person to explain all the popular ways in which the word is used, in addition to posting your favourite technical information.

Wendyboat asked what was meant by "bokeh", not only and purely what bokeh means according to a certain technical definition that you happen to regard as correct because that's what Google finds and because that is what is used by certain writers you respect.

Martin about the time, you can of just say what the time is, explain how to read a clock and explain how the clock works.
What I mean is tell how to read the time, for example.

Bokeh is:
- Tell the time
How pleasant the out of focus blur is.

- Explain how to read the time
How pleasant the out of focus blur is.
The way the light is distributed withing the highlights is a good indicator for this since the blur is build up with them.
Soft looking highlights is the bokeh we enjoy the most since it lead to a smooth blur.
Were as a highlights that looks like a circle leads to busy and mostly overall unpleasant blur.
The outer shape and size of the highlights doesn't fall under the word bokeh.

- Explain how a clock works
How pleasant the out of focus blur is.
The way the light is distributed withing the highlights is a good indicator for this since the blur is build up with them.
Soft looking highlights is the bokeh we enjoy the most since it lead to a smooth blur.
Were as a highlights that looks like a circle leads to busy and mostly unpleasant blur.
How these highlights appear has to do with how the lens is corrected for other distortion mostly spherical aberration.
To put it simpler it is how good the light is focused and comes together.
If all the light comes perfectly together on the focus point then you have often a pleasant bokeh if not that often leads to the unpleasant kind.
The outer shape and size of the highlights doesn't fall under the word bokeh.
The outer shape is defined by the blades (number and form) of the aperture and size is relative to the distance.

You see it isn't that hard and what I mean is just a little step further but more correct.


Pete, bokeh is bokeh but one is more a generalization but the other just go a bit deeper, I believe they are the same.
Just like George said.
I'm with Stefan on this, up to a point; Bokeh has always referred to the manner in which a lens treats out-of-focus highlights. However, I think this is only one aspect of the whole subject of how lenses render backgrounds, and, lacking a suitable word that covers the subject, people have been stretching the meaning of bokeh to embrace more than the O-O-F aspect.
This is I believe only a very small part but what he said before that.
which is that clever people subvert the meanings of words for their own ends, and ignorant people misuse words because they don't understand them, or more commonly, can't think of the right one.
Is the one that cause the expending of the meaning of the word.
Still the meaning are still very close together only that the outershape and size of the blur also falls sometimes under the meaning but since no one explain what they mean when using the word bokeh.

Smooth is mostly the word use for bokeh and that's a correct word to use for the intended meaning when talking about pleasant bokeh.
Size is almost never connected to bokeh by someone I believe.
Shape of the highlight often is and the number of blades because of that.
Think that the later is caused by the lens companies, it easy to tell that number of blades leads to a better bokeh (smooth background) but in truth that isn't the case and the word bokeh is used wrongly there.
When you use the lens wide open it hardly matters how many blades you have anyways but still we talk about bokeh then.

So my conclusion is that bokeh is bokeh and that it still means bokeh and that it only has one meaning.

The bokeh, or quality of the blurred image in the photograph
the quality so not the shape and size.
Your link

No, I have. A thousand apologies; I meant to write "Iceblinker".

G

All this has given me a nasty headache and my eyes hurt so much everything has gone out of focus.
david.

Professor Roy is someone I work with.

Never mind.

Well, you come across as a reasonably intelligent person of more than fourteen years of age, so, yes!

G