Bokeh is a term that is used to described a set of effects that are caused by the way any given lens treats certain elements in a photograph. I have been intentionally vague in this definititon because it apparently means so many different things to so many different people. It seems to be a relatively new term, but the phenomenon is as old as Galileo, at least.
I have read that the term comes from the Japanese word for blur. I am not sure of that. No one else is either. I have studied Japanese and having worked for a major Japanese camera manufacturing company, I know many native Japanese linguists who agree that it would be a stretch to consider the term derived from any word, which we can agree upon.
The Japanese word for blur might fit, but who knows. None-the-less, the term bokeh has been showing up in literature and photography discussion groups for ten years or so. Since no one has really standardized a definition for bokeh yet, I guess it can mean whatever you want it to mean, but it is gradually gaining a specific definition .
The following couple of links will give you an idea of what it is coming to mean. If you want to jump over and read more about bokeh, then do so and then come back to my lens discourse below. I'll Throw my six-pence worth in.
If It's Not Bokeh, Don't Fix It - DOF and Bokeh - DigitalRev.com.
Bokeh
Bokeh is a Japanese term, which literally means fuzzy. DOF signifies the part of the image that is in focus, the depth of field in the image that is clear, Bokeh signifies the part that is unfocused. The reason people have given it a name, is because the fuzz can be good or bad. Good bokeh is nice uniform fuzz that looks nice, while bad bokeh just looks messy. The quality of the fuzz depends on the lens. Sometimes bokeh is clearly defined as little circular fuzzy shapes; a lens with few diaphragm blades might give less circular and more angular shapes.
DOF and Bokeh go hand in hand together, the only thing you as a photographer needs to decide is how much of the image is going to be blurred and where you want the image to be focused, or if you want any blur at all.
Here's Another Link: http://idealfstop.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/02/bokeh_for_dummi.html
As I wrote previously, the set of circumstances caused by the term bokeh seems have been around as long as there have been lenses, and noticeably so, as long as there been photographs to record them. Bokeh supposedly figures into what makes a lens good or bad. But since this is a subjective judgment, it is useful only as much as photographers (and lookers) agree. So instead of chatting away about some BS mo-jive term that is generally used to appear to be in the photographic know, lets move onto something else.
Lens sciences have been developing for a few hundred years. Once it was both an art and a science. Families of glass workers began to specialize in making lenses to make telescopes and spectacles, and other optical products through trial and error. The correct shapes of lenses were learned and passed on to families in the trade.
I don't presume to know their secrets, but at some point, mathematics in the form of geometry, trigonometry, algebra, and calculus were applied to define replicable forms of convex and concave glass surfaces to perform in a variety of predictable ways.
Many variables go into the various formulas for making acceptable photographic lenses. They have been in development for about two hundred years. Everything from the kind of sand used and other media, which goes into the firing furnaces to make the glass, to the materials for making the contoured moulds, to the surface grinders and finishes and coatings--are now mostly computerized using algorithms to mathematically describe and control the way a finished lens is made to perform.
If you want to gain a real appreciation for lenses, get a good book and a slab of optical quality glass and build a telescope from scratch. My oldest brother did. It took him, working a few hours a week grinding the glass, about two years. It is an interesting part of physics. And, although it may help to understand the science behind controlling light to make photographs through the use of lenses, it isn't really necessary.
Suffice it to agree that there are several different models and associated algorithms to describe several different lens types that we have come to accept as good (or bad). One design may be incredibly acute in resolution, another may spread this resolution from edge to edge, and others may be sharp in the center, but diffused on the outer limits. Other lenses, very expensive ones, make a science out of blurring the image in an acceptable way, so as to render so-called softer images of human skin and flesh tones.
During my lifetime, I have participated in a number of educational forums to further my understanding about photography. However, while I have sought to learn from other photographers, I have resisted the notion of boiling subjective opinions down into objective rules. I came to this modality gradually. But in photography, the art, there are no rules.
There are lenses and there are lenses. There are no good lenses and no bad lenses. There are cheap lenses and there are expensive lenses. All can be tools for the creative to deliver images of the types they desire to. A really nice soft-focus portrait lens costing ten grand or more is not necessarily any better than a cheap lens covered with a sky-light filter with Chap-Stick swirled around the outer parameter--if the results of the latter is better, perceptibly, the same, or more desirable.
Tessar, Compar, Prontar, Biometric, Dia-this and what-sa-that--all are descriptions of specific lens formulas. It was once believed in the West, that certain formulations for lenses were better than those made in the East and vica versa. This is nonsense. All are based on excellent science and I have personally found Eastern lenses, which I was once led to believe to be inferior to MY Western lenses, are actually superior in certain applications.
My purpose here is to merely make you aware of lens differences. I suggest that you analyze your own photographs. Sure it is also good to collect images, and study the works of great photographers and artists, which appeal to your emotions and incorporate those into your own mind's-eye, tucked back for subliminal expression at some point when needed. But eventually your own style will emerge.
I submit that art proceeds the science. The various methods used to teach art by reducing it to rules of thirds and optical centers and so on are indeed helpful, but they arose in an attempt to qualify something that was originally felt at an emotional level. Don't be afraid to let the voices within speak--through your emotions, or through your heart, as any artist might say. Hopefully they'll wind up, atleast partially, in an expressive photographic image.
I recall reading at a very young age, photography books that told me to make my pictures "say something". Tried as I might, I didn't understand this back then. I come from a family of artists, who lean very far to the practical side. Maybe I can blame this on the Great Depression. There is little time for art when your family is starving to death, as were the families my mom and Dad belonged to during the depression.
So for you literalists, let me spell that idea out more black and white; before taking, at least some of your pictures,ask yourslef WHY? you are taking this picuture. You may readily be able to say, "so I can remeber what this loks like." But it when it comes to art, it becomes harder to answer the question. The picture doesn't have to speak a paragraph to you, to be "saying" something. You may only hear a faint whisper--and that only if you try real hard.
Learn to know which lenses deliver which effects. This can be a lifelong pursuit, but it can start now with the lenses you have. When these lenses will no longer adequately convey what the voices are telling you, then, and only then to you need to acquire more lenses. I feel that photographers today, are often so overwhelmed by the shear availability of gear, that they seldom really come to understand the value of each piece. Fewer is sometimes better.
Now let me take a stab at defining what is coming to be described by the term bokeh. Lenses, are, more or less, designed to intensify light by concentrating the dispersed energy into ever smaller and smaller, or more and more intense beams, which become what our eyes perceive as tiny points of focus. That's what we call these points--focus. When these points are not as intensely concentrated, it is then called out of focus.
Whether by hap stance as with the earlier lenses or by design as are known formulas used to make lenses today, the patterns of spheres and cones and circles and rods and lines, both vertical and horizontal--take on different shapes and intensities such as in the out-of-focus back-grounds or foregrounds found in outdoor portraits. Some shapes and intensities within the unfocused realm, have a greater or lessor tendency to draw the eye away from the subject than others. In most cases this quality is less desirable. But not always.
Further, with the use of computers and software with a gazillion more readily available working algorithms for rendering final images than can ever possibly be incorporated into any bag of lenses--you can deliver results similar to any lens on the market. But you have to know what to look for before you can duplicate it.
Add to the equation that only the most discriminating viewers, mostly photographers, are going to be able to tell the difference anyway--that all of this serious pomp and circumstance concerning lenses, is lost on the average viewer. So, I suppose that my final thought here is to suggest that we should never take ourselves, our medium, our art, our science, too serious.
Judged by the ultimate criteria, ask yourself, does this image do for anyone else, hopefully several body elses, what it does for me. If not you may have failed. If so, you may have succeeded. But even this is not etched in stone. Perhaps you meant to express offense. LOL.
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