I have been messing around with bokeh which is something that Aquarium (I think) champions when talking about one of the differences between your p’n‘s cameras and your DSLR.

Bokeh is from a Japanese word (Boke) which means blurry and the art of bokeh is the art of getting your main subject matter all nice and sharp and the rest of the image blurry. A good technique for this is to set your camera to a small f-stop, say f3.6 or f4.5. The smaller the better as this opens up your aperture wider and lets more light in, but for a shorter period of time, so capturing the subject that you are aimed at.

Here’s an example, I have aimed my focus on the Bluevein cheese in the foreground and the rest of the cheese platter is soft and blurry. This is sometimes a desired effect in cooking magazines, trez artay.

pain master said:

I have been messing around with bokeh which is something that Aquarium (I think) champions when talking about one of the differences between your p’n‘s cameras and your DSLR.

Bokeh is from a Japanese word (Boke) which means blurry and the art of bokeh is the art of getting your main subject matter all nice and sharp and the rest of the image blurry. A good technique for this is to set your camera to a small f-stop, say f3.6 or f4.5. The smaller the better as this opens up your aperture wider and lets more light in, but for a shorter period of time, so capturing the subject that you are aimed at.

Here’s an example, I have aimed my focus on the Bluevein cheese in the foreground and the rest of the cheese platter is soft and blurry. This is sometimes a desired effect in cooking magazines, trez artay.

That’s great…….looks exactly like out of a cook book

sometimes, it pays to step back a touch because like in my cheese shot, even the bluevein is starting to blur off. Having a good white light for your subject will make it easier for your camera to shoot in the lower f-stops.

A way of giving this a shot if you don’t have a DSLR, is to use your p’n‘s and set it to Macro, normally represented by a little flower on your dial or guide, or if you have an Olympus, then set it to Super Macro. This will give you a sharper focus on your subject.

Also, remember to aim at the subject you want, half press the shutter, then aim/line up your shot without releasing the shutter, then fire away and your main target should be in focus…

Here are some pistachios and some rocket.

and the focus doesn’t always have to be in the foreground, although it is easier. I have been practicing and playing around with this technique of late, and it does start to get your head around some of the processes involved in the camera.

In this shot, I aimed at the olives which are mid-shot and managed to get a good blur on both the tomatoes in the foreground and the marinaded feta in the background. All good yummy food for a yummo lunch..

Some lenses are better than others when it comes to bokeh, but all will achieve it in some way or another. The best and easiest are macro lenses (see the food shots), but a big telephoto lens can give you the same results. You may need to space your subjects apart and you may need to stand further back. In this shot, the Motuan chap on the left is my obvious focal point and I am happy for the chap sitting a fair way back to be bokeh.

Again, taken with low f-stop and good bright sunshine.

Happy Boxing Day :)

well done PM. very nice shots.

nice shots.
i thought bokeh was the light circles artifacts you get in the out of focus areas, especially with lesser lenses and at particular f-stops. a photo with “bad” bokeh not only has the circle artifacts but, they have certain (undesirable) qualities. wikipedia has the article and some photos, to explain further http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh

Bokeh characteristics may be quantified by examining the image’s circle of confusion. In out-of-focus areas, each point of light becomes a disc.

Tell you what .. it is just simply a new name cranked up.

These techniques of photography have been around since the dawn of camera lenses and well before the Japanese learned about camera lenses.

“Nikon 1 started produced in 1948”

The initial batch of Nikkor optics, 50mm f1.4, 50mm f1.5, f2 and a f3.5 version, 85mm f2 and a 135mm f4. Most of these were offered in both the Contax and Leica mounts – just like one of those third party lens supplier nowadays, supplementing some major brands. It suffices to say, during that time, the Nikkors were not produced just for the Nikon but as a third party brand supplier to the Contax and Leicas.

good info roughbarked.
i agree about the word sounding a bit far east and sometimes explained even worse. nevertheless it’s good to know about it, just because some optics/lenses can produce really ugly light discs (with color shift on edges of light discs) in out of focus areas in background lit situations. Nikkor and a couple other lenses are pretty good in this regard. some other third party (cheaper) lenses produce photos with “bad bokeh” artifacts. these things are much more evident on SLR, where throwing backgrounds out of focus is much easier to do than in compact cameras. which itself is a very desirable part of photography (with SLR.)

I concur, and while that wiki article does discuss the circle phenomena, I think that not only has the Japanese word of boke been westernised, it also has blurred from its original meaning and thanks to photo-sharing sites like p’bucket and flickr, the term bokeh now refers to a blurry foreground/background.

cheers,
pm.

My grandaughter must know a bit of Japanese because to her anything that won’t work is “boke.”

Sorry for the interruption.

comment wally may.