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Comment by michelpp | Hacker News Reader

One of my favorite Bokeh lenses is the Nikon 500mm reflex telephoto lens. The "Mak" style with a rear primary mirror and a front secondary works a lot like common compact telescopes. The Bokeh is tricky to apply, it's a fixed zoom telephoto lens so your subject must be at least 10 meters or so a way and it's hard to handhold, but the "donut" aperture of the lens makes for some very cool (or weird depending on your tastes) effects. The article calls this a "bad" lens but I love the effect.

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Almost anything can be used well for artistic effect.

Here are some shots from the Nikkor 500mm:

http://www.indeed.co.jp/blog/scrap2/lens/reflexnikkor_500mm_...

Oh, very nice! Since we're sharing bokeh photos, here's my favorite of the ones I've taken. It's the "creamy" style, not circular. Olympus E-P5 with Olympus 75mm F/1.8 (my favorite portrait lens):

https://geary.smugmug.com/Pets/Dogs/i-dNMQW2v/A

This is a lovely example, thank you for the link!

Your definition conflicts with the author's.

1st paragraph:

>as I own this site, I get to define good and bad Bokeh for the purposes here! The other key term is “image.” Bokeh is a property of IMAGES, not a property of LENSES.

The shape of the bokeh is given by the shape of the aperture, so it is also a property of the lenses.

The specific word is related to the aesthetic quality of the effect in context, but that doesn’t mean it is truly independent of the lens.

Whenever bokeh is mentioned in /r/pics, they are usually talking about the blurred background in an image that has shallow depth of field, not any particular quality of light in the image. Drives me nuts, but not worth arguing about.

What exactly drives you nuts? That they shouldn't talk about the subjective quality of the blur, but rather the quality of light?

Lots of people think bokeh is just a blurred background.

...and that drives me nuts too.

And yet more than half of the page is about lenses.

not sure why I'm getting downvoted here for simply pointing out the author defines his definition of Bokeh in the 1st paragraph.

It’s because you’re coming off as clueless and tone deaf. Your post is argumentative just to make a point, and clearly demonstrates you don’t know much about the subject.

Who cares if the definition is slightly different? We’re talking about the same emergent phenomena and I think you realize that.

People upvote contributions not trolls.

Welcome to HN!

I would guess that people think that the author's preferred definition doesn't preclude other people from having different definitions. You seem to assume it does, at least in the context of this discussion, and that assumption is noxious to the people who are downvoting you.

I'd add that while the Author is correct--bokeh is a property of images, not lenses--its not materially different that how most photographers understand the term. While a lot of photographers may say things like "that lens has great bokeh", they don't think that bokeh is some quality in the lens. They are just shortening an idea lke "this lens produces images with great bokeh." It is a lazy way of rephrasing it, but I have never met a photographer that thinks bokeh is not referring to the image.

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