No, you can not get “MORE BOKEH” in your shots
Oct 5, 2023
Neil van Niekerk
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
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If you’ve ever heard this from a client or a friend or in a review, you know it! They’d go “Can you add more bokeh in this photo?”. The answer is easy! No! You can not.
And it’s not because you can not make the background more blurred. It’s because it just does not make sense. Bokeh and shallow depth-of-field (DoF) aren’t equivalent. Yes, Depth of field has some impact on bokeh, but it’s not the same thing, and you can not use those phrases interchangeably. Phrases like “give it more bokeh” hurt our sensibilities because it is nonsensical.
Bokeh is not a quantitative descriptor, it’s about quality. Yes, the amount of blurriness is part of what defines bokeh, but so are smoothness, shape, transitions, and a slew of other things that involve the lens optics. You’ve probably heard about swirly bokeh or bubble bokeh as well. Three is just no way to measure Bokeh, it has not quantity, hence you can’t give more or less bokeh.
I shot the photo above with a Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens at its widest aperture – f/1.4 … You can easily see that it has a pretty shallow depth of field. F/1.4 shallow …. But still, the background looks “busy”. There is a pattern and a jitter to it. That busy pattern to the background distracts attention. It is intrusive. (Click on the image to see the full-size version.)
This is bad bokeh. Certainly of lower quality. Hey, you can add whatever negative adjective you want to it. However, no matter how much O opened the lens, I didn’t give the photo “more bokeh”. In fact, I can’t even give it “more bokeh” by using a different 50mm lens.
What I can do, is improve the look of the photo by using a lens with great bokeh that has smoother and more pleasing look.
So, for the love of all that is good on this planet, please stop using the word “bokeh” like this. You can have Good bokeh. You can have bad bokeh. You can have interesting, swirly bokeh when you use certain vintage lenses. But you most certainly can not have “more bokeh” or “less bokeh”.
About the Author
Neil van Niekerk is a photographer and an Emmy-awarded time-lapse videographer based in New Jersey, USA. He runs a photography studio in Fairfield, NJ. You can see more of his work on his website, YouTube, and the top-selling books he has written.
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21 responses to “No, you can not get “MORE BOKEH” in your shots”
If people are looking at the bokeh the photo sucks.
Yes you can. Larger aperture. That’s it
Serge Bu Not many people have lenses that go larger than f1.4
Serge Bu I take it you didn’t read the article…
Del Vincent correct
Serge Bu yes it was rather obvious from your comment given that bokeh isn’t quantifiable nor anything to do with how wide open a lens can go…
Del Vincent tbh the article quite sucks, for the photo example in there if you’d use f/0.95 lens, then you’d certainly get shallower depth of field and consequently less busy background…actually you could even say “more bokeh” whatever silly it may sound.
The main problem of the article is that it says “Yes, Depth of field has some impact on bokeh” well, the impact of DoF on bokeh is actually linear, thus bokeh is in a way quantifiable.
Serge Bu well done, don’t bother reading it
Ben Tichý nope, not in the slightest. There is absolutely no correlation between the two. The article itself is frankly rubbish, however Bokeh does relate to quality, not quantity. That aspect of the article is correct. It can be good, bad, you can get better or worse, it can’t be “more” or “less”.
Shallower depth of field doesn’t mean “more” bokeh. You could use an f/0.001 and you wouldn’t get “more” bokeh.
Bokeh is nothing to do with how busy the background is. Being pedantic, it doesn’t even have anything to do with the out of focus blur of objects, purely how aesthetically pleasing the out of focus points of light are rendered.
The main take is, people misuse terminology. It happens a hell of a lot in photography. Probably because to qualify as a professional nowadays you need to have owned a camera for at least 7 minutes and created a social media channel announcing yourself as a professional before you even bothered unboxing the camera.
Buy a 400mm f/2.8 and have fun…
Anyone ever cut a shape (ie: a heart) out of paper and make heart shaped bokah by covering the lens with the shape in the middle? That’s a fun bokah project!
Norbert St. Pierre or a tree for your Christmas tree lights!!
Norbert St. Pierre it is indeed. I haven’t done it for over a decade, might have to do it again now you’ve reminded me.
Media: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10160655594875236&set=p.10160655594875236&type=3
Refreshing to see a post that distinguishes between bokeh and depth of field.
Now if you can get the author to post about how he lights his photos, that would be great.
I find it a bit ironic that the article complains about misuse of the word Bokeh, when the actual meaning of Bokeh is the quality of out of focus *points of light*. Not just anything that is out of focus.
Media: https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia1.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2F6WyUCjoHAzXs4%2Fgiphy.gif%3Fcid%3D120c0147lurbl4jgdiwyn4pqjvvd2mggwgfvvhjfjtk81dc3%26ep%3Dv1_gifs_search%26rid%3Dgiphy.gif%26ct%3Dg&h=AT2VvKBmYCusmOR1F2oNnOgpmAkuQQTwlI3Cue-O1eWonKcxWyE5WIYzW7XMWPBO7cJ0tVYRh0rsErmTYTY2vfJufQSBO6Bv-qbfmwThFBlmKYzIzbZkHeJ_FoIH-E_p&s=1
Toneh
Omg I can’t believe I just wasted 2min reading that. 🤦♂️
See ya…I’m off to flip the front lens on my Helios to give it some MORE BOKEH 😂
“More Bokeh!” obviously is the new “ENHANCE!”.
Having said that: The unsharp rendition of your Nikon 50mm f/1.4(a Nikkor AF-S 50 mm f/1.4G?) looks terrible. I really got to dig out a couple images of mine I shot with the 50mm f/1.8 AF-D for comparison. Yes, that one is quite “busy” too, but the donut shaped highlights, the circular blur and the weird colors (magenta tint & fringing)…? Yuck.
Sure it’s intimidating by the sheer size, but for portraits I’d prefer the 105 f/2.8 Micro Nikkor or even the 70-200mm f/2.8 any time – if you can afford a little more distance.
You don’t need to. Find a simpler background
Compelling images do not rely on the quality or amount of background blur. Such nonsense… learn some craft, be creative.