Bokeh. and DOF..warning...opinion follows!

Shooter

Shooter

Veteran
Been thinking about "bokeh" (the "term and the effect") as regards lenses and images

Decided...I hate it! ( loathe it)

I hate the term (that I never new existed until maybe 5 years ago after 35 years experience in film) and the visual effect .

I hate the images that show the aperture blades as a geometric pattern behind a foreground image.

I hate focus pulls on short DOF from bright objects to fg to demonstrate "bokeh" and a lens with extreme max apertures.

The motion images I love..never have bokeh or shallow excessive DOF

I love DOF that shows camera blur naturally and for a purpose. ie focuses attention to the subject without distraction of any bg bokeh" crap"
(Depth of field is a cinematrographic art - it s not a wank).

I am starting a "DEEP" DOF movement to rid us of the scourge of "bokeh" and "big fat sensors".
 
But... but... having her eyes in focus and her ears out of focus for no reason looks so... cinematic... [/sarcasm]
 
After shooting with small sensor video cameras for ages its nice to finally have a choice. I think its a thrill that wears off after a while, but hey when you put out all that money for a fast lens you naturally want to crank it wide open. Kinda like buying a fast car. Thank God Citizen Kane wasn't shot with a 5D.
 
I hear you, I get lots of work from a Swedish agent that hands out thousends of micro comercials a year and in the begining the bokeh others produced was so bad it needed a new name and I called it "hash coma"

 
The problem when a technique becomes over used, is it becomes really cheesy and cliched, so people eventually start reacting against it and avoid using it. That's a real shame, when it's such a fundamentally important technique as controlling depth of field, it just places limitations if you're avoiding shallow dof. Use wisely
 
Well I will "always" use the MFT sensor and it has its feel to it and the DOF comes and goes.
I like my subject sharp :) from nose to ear.
 
Imaginate said:
....but hey when you put out all that money for a fast lens you naturally want to crank it wide open....
Click to expand...

As an effect - maybe. But imho we should buy fast lenses primarily because we maybe shoot under conditions where and when we really need them - and not to make our picture just look mushy. I personally love fast lenses but not because of the "bokeh.madness" & the "DOF-craziness" - which is very often nothing more than a prestidigitation to cream & butter over what is missing in composition of a frame or in dramatic flow of a movie.

So I think Shooter is right: It's the current equivalent of what certain cinematographers once did when using star-cross filters (a cinematographic illness considered by me as something of an optical psoriasis - thank God it's over) or the good old "nylon stocking over the lens". As an effect: Yes.

And, okay: If a "Marlene" had ten glasses of whatever too much and you have to drown here swollen face in optical soup - may save your and her behind. Or you want to re-create the POV of a substance addict who can focus only to certain points in a picture - okay. Else it's a convention I hope goes away rather sooner than later.
 
Very similar to when someone got a new DVE many years back. Every commercial had the same cheesy effect.
Ha, too funny, trying to type on my iPad and my 160 pound Cane Corso wants to be a lap dog!

At any rate, shallow depth of field has its place... Cut from say a 16mm wide establishing shot of a couple ice skating in an outdoor park, to a 28mm medium shot as the couple falls down together while holding hands, to a 50mm tight shot of the guy giving her an engagement ring, to the 85mm reaction shot on her face. Those tight shots would look nice with the Christmas lights in the background out of focus giving a nice color pop while hilighting the product and the expression on the woman's face as she says yes. But shoot the whole thing with ultra shallow DOF and you would just end up with 30 seconds of mush. Why even shoot on location if you can't see the location?

I imagine when the scarlet ships 1K overcranking will be the next big over used effect. But until then, enjoy the world with a half inch of focus!

All the Best!

Dave
 
I'm going to have to agree that the word is awful. I always have a hard time remembering it and I feel silly saying it.

I have to disagree on issues with the effect because it's not an effect. Every lens will have an out of focus area at some point. You have to decide which one you want, even if you hate all of them. Setting up an interview and leaving your depth deep is going to create a confusing image, not something most people want. Otherwise this thread has merit, showing off that you can do focus pulls with no purpose doesn't make someone's work impressive. Personally, I really enjoy overdone shallow DoF and excessive bokeh just because the shooter can. It tells me who not to hire without the trouble of an interview.
 
If you didn't care about being able to get shallow Dof, wouldn't you be better served with a different camera then a AF100, like a HPX170?
 
I've got a friend in another market who gained a client after his competitor shot a commercial for a place that sells designer frames for glasses. It was originally shot on a 5DmkII with such shallow DOF that the owner complained nobody could see that he offered the areas largest supply of designer frames. The original shooter refused to reshoot saying, it's the look. Well he lost that client! My friend shot their next commercial with his 5DmkII, but he closed down the iris to show the whole wall of frames in focus. Bingo! The client can now see his daughter trying on a pair of glasses in the foreground, and his 3000 frames in the background.
 
Chaos123x said:
If you didn't care about being able to get shallow Dof, wouldn't you be better served with a different camera then a AF100, like a HPX170?
Click to expand...

If painting in - for instance - only shades of red became an overly used convention and somebody pointed that out - it wouldn't mean that he himself would not use red when painting.

And there is a bit more about the "architecture" of a picture from a big-sensor camera than DOF.
 
tipota said:
If painting in - for instance - only shades of red became an overly used convention and somebody pointed that out - it wouldn't mean that he himself would not use red when painting.

And there is a bit more about the "architecture" of a picture from a big-sensor camera than DOF.
Click to expand...


But people say they loathe and hate bokeh and creamy smooth lucious DOF..

One thing i'm happy about the DSLR taking over is no more unmotivated zooms. or zooms at all. Dolly shots look so much better. That being said I may get a X lens so I can do power servo zooms when needed.
 
Still plenty of unmotivated zooms, just not as smooth now.

By the way, I have producers ask for zooms all the time. My motivation for obliging? Getting paid!
 
Chaos123x said:
But people say they loathe and hate bokeh and creamy smooth lucious DOF..

One thing i'm happy about the DSLR taking over is no more unmotivated zooms. or zooms at all. Dolly shots look so much better. That being said I may get a X lens so I can do power servo zooms when needed.
Click to expand...

I read that differently: People start to hate it, because it is over-used. And, at least in narrative movies, it can become a nuisance rather quickly.

About zooms .... I fail to see, why DSLR's helped to overcome "unmotivated zooms". Actually I see more zooming now than ever before. And: An "unmotivated zoom" is a terrible zoom whenever someone uses it. Not because it is a zoom but becasue it is unmotivated.

Apart from that I personally tend not to use zooms for zooming while camera is rolling unless for special cases (as in the movie the picture of my sig was taken from) and for quick "work zooms". But that's just me. I find zooms do to the audiences more often what dog owners do when their pets have littered the carpet - stick their noses in. An overly pedagogic tool.
 
DoF is something we get under certain conditions. Some use it to the benefit of so called "art", others because it happened to be there. In fact DoF is a limitation of a certain lens to focus the whole area like our eyes. There are so called fixed focus lenses that represent our eyes in a better way and are mainly found in the so called point and shoot cameras. Like filmlook DoF is something we have learned to like for different reasons. If we do a pan with a video camera at the higer framerates and higher shutter speed, we get a smooth pan, but we say: not nice; it looks like video and not like film. We have learned to like the limitations of film cameras shooting at 24fps. Its the same story with DoF and even Zoom versus Dollyshot. Remember the so called Hitchcock effect of zoom and Dolly. Its fun to do it, but at what purpose?
So it is all about the purpose of the shot.
The younger movie viewers are so used to the handycam shots, that they like a movie where the camera is moving like hell.
The old style of a steady camera is called old fashioned. Look at the clips the youth is making: fast moving pictures, heavely moving camera and lots of quick cuts between shots. You can hardly see what is happening in the shot, but they learned to like that.
Over 50 years I wonder what the filmschools will teach you.
One thing is true: Give me a camera with a 35mm dslr full 4k sensor, ISO 100.000, High bitrates(50 and higher), Intra frame codec, 24/25/30/60/120p, 10 bits 422, a very fast 24x zoom lens(f2) , auto/manual focus and motor zoom, remote control of camera and lens, no aliasing/moire, 3 chip sensor for HDR, and I will be able to shoot whatever shot I want.
Probably it will cost a fortune today, but over 10 years within the range of lots of budgets.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top