Pentax K-5

Posted: 28 Mar 2011 09:15 PM PDT

Have you been wondering what this Bokeh, that most pro’s talk about, is? It is unquestionably the misspelling of a Japanese word if you take it in a literary sense. The real spelling is Boke and its a Japanese word meaning Fuzzy. Ok don’t wonder where your friends learned Japanese from. Photography has a lot to do with Japan and there are a lot of Japanese pro’s this word was generally used by them to illustrate the fuzzy areas and its quality. Now an English writer writing for an English magazine made it bokeh which is the way it is pronounced.

To illustrate Bokeh we need to understand Dof or Depth Of Field. Dof has two measurements one is the distance of the Focused area from the lens the second is the depth of the area in focus. The first is called Dtf depth to field and the second is Dof or depth of field. To understand this two concepts the image below should help. The camera has three butterflies in front of it.

Pentax K-5

These are divided into three regions the not in focus area in front, the area in focus and the area not in focus at the back. Now anything that is in the Depth of Field area will be considerably sharp and will be the area of interest in the photo. The area in front and behind this region will be blurry.

Bokeh refers to this blurry area. Now why all the fuss about this blurry area , is it not blurred ? Lets understand bokeh in additional detail. Let us understand that the capability of bokeh is subjective, but the subjectivity is due to the fact that there is variation in the middle of bokeh produced by separate lenses.

The characteristics of a given lenses bokeh is analyzed by looking at the circle of confusion. Circle of confusion is the (blurry) spot that is produced by a (definite) spot that is out of focus in the image.

Now the circle of confusion has a lot to do with the shape of the aperture. That is the shape of the circle of confusion is thought about a lot by the shape of the aperture. Lenses depending on their build capability have separate type of aperture. That is in short gap ,break shape is not a circle. It is more like a polygon than a circle. The best bokeh have circle of confusion that is defused or has no sharp edge.

Better capability bokeh gives the image a more pleasing look. Bokeh comes into examine only when a short Dof is used when a large Dof is used most of the field is in focus and there is no blurry component to have a bokeh. In short Dof applications mostly we intend to give the object in focus importance, depending on the application we might want or not want the onlooker to have concentration on the area that is blurry. The type of bokeh regularly helps us in doing this.

Some more expensive lens allows the photographer to operate the bokeh. Though a useful highlight you might be best off paying for more gap ,break or constant gap ,break than paying for bokeh control.

Most of the retouching software have options to originate artificial blurr and along with it tools to operate the bokeh of the blur thus created.

The capability of an image is greatly improved with the look of the bokeh. Next time you are out purchasing a lens do look at the bokeh the lens creates. The capability of the same can make or break you picture.

This image shows circle of confusion distinctly towards the mid right. If you advance the image (by clicking on it) you will observation that these circles are not diffusing but rather are quite sharp towards the edge which shows a low capability bokeh, but if you look at it additional you will observation that the circles being noticed give a best look to the image all together. The purpose of the image was to make you understand what is circle of confusion how to rate them and most importantly that the capability of bokeh is subjective. Depending on the way you photograph, one type of bokeh might suite you best than another type.

So conclude for your self what type of bokeh you like and would complement your work. Also look around on the net for images taken using the singular lens you are concerned in. Flickr or other such social photo sharing platforms could be of great help in this endeavour. Even with point and shoot cameras you can look around for images to understand their capabilities. Mostly point and shoot cameras don’t have small Dof and thus bokeh doesn’t count at all, but there are some higher end version where bokeh counts.

There is another bright thing to note about bokeh, you could unquestionably give shapes to it. This is done by using a very small gap ,break and a cutout of the same size(to avoid vignetting), the cut out is put in front of the lens and the shape of the cut our becomes the shape of the circle of confusion. This can be used to originate very bright images.

The image on the left shows a heart shaped bokeh. This is created by using a card board with a small heart shaped hole cut in it. This is then place in front of the camera’s lens. The gap ,break is set to a similar, in fact a minuscule larger size.

So next time you buy a lens do check out the bokeh it produces. Also do give importance to the bokeh your current lens produces.

What in the World is Bokeh?

Thanks To : Canon S95 Camera

Pentax K-5 Camera

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Pentax K-5

Pentax K-5

Pentax K-5

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