Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/11/21
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I see now that Erwin in fact did not mean what I mean by "bokeh" when he sent his earlier messsage. When I use the word "bokeh", I refer to the way in which a lens renders out-of-focus portions of an image. I believe that different lenses do this differently; some do it in a way I find more pleasing and others in a way I find less pleasing. Thus I do not regard "bokeh" as mythical or subjective, but as a real phenomenon that can be measured. In Erwin's recent message, he says that he also believes that different lenses will render out-of-focus parts of an image differently. Thus I conclude he was using the word "bokeh" differently than I would. In reading messages on the list and articles on the Web, I see that people use the term "bokeh" to refer to many things -- even narrow depth of field achieved with wide apertures. I find this all pretty confusing. From now on, I'm going to try to use more clumsy, but perhaps less confusing, English expressions like "rendition of out-of-focus image areas."