Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/01/01

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Bokeh - proven myth ? My goodness not again? ;-)
From: Henry Ting <henryting10@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2002 23:47:33 -0800 (PST)

That was exactly my point about everybody getting
exited about this "bokeh" stuff that gave me the
impulse to test it once and for all. The conclusion is
that if one is to shoot a picture with the aperture
wide open, there is absolutely no difference of
"bokeh". But when one closes the iris down, depending
on the lens design whether the iris forms a shape of
slit or circular, the out of focus areas perhaps might
be noticeable, especially the illuminated shape. Now,
that's a far cry from Leica lens having a distinctive
"bokeh" image where Nikons and Zeiss does not. 

Put it to rest folks, "out of focus" is "out of
focus". Ugly/beautiful "bokeh" is just a myth.
- --- Ted Grant <tedgrant@shaw.ca> wrote:
> Henry Ting wrote:
> 
> >This is going to be controversial. I read about a
> lot of Leica lens
> offering a distinct "Bokeh" image >that's missing
> from lens of other  makes.
> I was confused as to how could this be possible,
> >unless outside of physics' existentialism, Leica
> lens have a metaphysical
> spirit that the likes of >Nikon or Zeiss lack.
> >To prove my point, I did some experiment.<<<<<<
> 
> Hi Henry,
> Well lad if you want to see controversial I'd think
> your first test trip
> would be to the LUG archives and look at the, what
> I'm sure must be in the
> high hundreds of posts covering the "horrors of
> bokeh" and the hours of
> testing many before you have done, which basically
> hasn't made a whit of
> difference to taking, " better pictures!"
> 
> In a career of now just over 50 years of published
> photography, it wasn't
> until about 45 years into the profession did I ever
> hear of bokeh and that
> was right here on the LUG.  Much to my amazement I
> never knew all those
> years that the out of focus part of the picture was
> so very important to the
> success of the photograph.
> 
> I mean back around '97 some of the lads here almost
> came to key board blows
> over the subject, great hours of wasted time was
> hammered out day after day
> and many of us sat in wonderment at the posts flying
> back and forth over
> this very inane bit of "scientific goobly bokeh
> gook" that's never made one
> of my pictures get published.
> 
> I can just imagine returning to the office with an
> incredible fire
> photograph and putting the picture in front of the
> picture editor then rave
> about the "bokeh!"  The editor would immediately
> think I'd been inhaling way
> too much smoke from the fire and throw me out.
> 
> A couple of things, and I know some lads like to
> know all this techie stuff
> and that's all well and good. However lad, may I
> suggest you save a ton of
> time and film and testing and all that high end
> scientific stuff and just go
> read the archives.
> 
> Secondly, the first thing you did that could be
> construed as a major mistake
> on the LUG, is come in with a heavy duty test thing
> on the bokehie stuff
> before reading the archives and then telling
> everyone your test was going to
> be controversial, jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh cool man! :-)
> A real attention getter.
> :-)
> 
> But a tiny word of advice from the old lad, load
> your camera go out and have
> much more fun taking pictures and forget all this
> bokeh stuff..  You'll feel
> better, we all get more sleep and more pictures
> taken ourselves.
> 
> So now be a good lad, go run a search for bokeh in
> the archives and have a
> wild time reading all those scary old stories
> written by witches and
> warlocks creating the strangest boooooooookeh you've
> ever seen. :-)
> 
> And lad, don't take me too seriously, as I just like
> to get on folks about
> strange technical things that have absolutely
> nothing to do with the success
> of the content of the photograph, which after all is
> the most important part
> of any photograph any time. Or that's what I've
> understood for quite a
> number of years.
> ted
> 
> Ted Grant Photography Limited
> www.islandnet.com/~tedgrant
> 
> --
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