DoF, Bokeh little berry I - or is it?

DoF, Bokeh little berry I - or is it?, originally uploaded by Rusty Marvin (feel free to comment) aka WYSIWYG.

Some of your have previous heard the story about my little berries, others may have not!
The experiments started back on October 22 nd to investigate the difference between a ‘point and shoot’ camera and the ability to adjust the aperture on sDLR or similar cameras. In capturing a clicked bokeh.

Further experiments were performed to see if there was constant method of producing a bokeh image using a point and click/point and shoot camera.

The experiments concluded with some test shots being performed in a controlled environment. This test found that the ratio of 1:1:4 camera, object and background worked on the Panasonic DMC TZ5 camera.

The ratio is not fixed as the distance between the camera and the object can be greater than 1 in the focal distance. However the background must be four times greater than the minimum focal distance between the camera and the object to be in focus. Experiments collection www.flickr.com/photos/rustymarvin/collections/72157625234...

The image above has been clicked using a macro lens 0.45 wide, which sort of tricks the cameras software into shallowing the distance between the camera and the focal object, in turn reducing the distance between the object and background.

So is it really a bokeh image, should it not have flashing lights behind it and other various party tricks. Well Bokeh as you know is from the Japanese Boke or Bo-ke, the ‘h’ was added for the English pronunciation and spelling.

So how old is bokeh, The English spelling bokeh was popularized in 1997, quite new then.

Well, I pondered that for a while....read on at your own risk.

The Art World
If we move to the art world, we find that this effect was used at the end of the 19th Century and start of the 20th Century by the French impressionist movement; here’s a few that you might know;
Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870)
Gustave Caillebotte (who, younger than the others, joined forces with them in the mid 1870s) (1848–1894)
Mary Cassatt (American-born, she lived in Paris and participated in four Impressionist exhibitions) (1844–1926)
Paul Cézanne (although he later broke away from the Impressionists) (1839–1906)
Edgar Degas (a realist who despised the term Impressionist, but is considered one, due to his loyalty to the group) (1834–1917)
Armand Guillaumin (1841–1927)
Édouard Manet (who did not regard himself, nor is generally seen, as an Impressionist, but who exhibited his work with theirs and was a great influence on them), (1832–1883)
Claude Monet (the most prolific of the Impressionists and the one who most clearly embodies their aesthetic)[17] (1840–1926)
Berthe Morisot (1841–1895)
Camille Pissarro (1830–1903)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)
Alfred Sisley (1839–1899)
So, 1830 to around 1930, if we then take watercolourist from 1910 onwards you will see these pictures using a similar technique.
We know that Monet was mentored by Charles Gleyre and together developed a en plein air technique. Much of their work was done outdoors, in the diffuse light provided by a large white umbrella.
We know that Monet had cataracts, his paintings having a reddish tone, some of the paintings he repainted post the operations, with bluer water lilies.
So, why am I rambling on about painted art, well mainly to understand what true bokeh is take a moment to look at Claude Monet, Impression, soleil levant

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Claude_...

Dutch Art
Then have a think about Van Gogh ‘self portrait, Starry night, Wind beaten tree, they all have the main object in clear focus with the back ground not so detailed.
We know than Vicent Van Gogh aet the lead based paint for substance; believe it or not he was very poor during the period of his creations, including numerous version of the famous daisy. On Bokeh terms he could be classed as a Boke-teru
Boke is from the Japanese word boketeru which means stupid, or senile. Someone's thinking is not clear or just plain wacked. So in photography, boke refers to the out of focus or "unclear" areas.
I know this word very well as my wife says "boketeru" to me all the time. It's pronounced bo-ke, not bo-kay.
We could in fact take the bokeh theory back to the quattrocento following what now seems the slightly more obscure gothic pure symbolism. The Italian greats simple did not include the background details were as the Dutch masters did. Wiki link en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Golden_Age_painting

Returning to where you started from

Returning to my controlled experiments, the position of light had no affect on the ‘out of focus’ area. It was clear that the relation of the object to the focal point of the camera and the ratio to the background generated the affect of focusing the eye on the object. The controlled experiment results are in the set ‘Bokeh the Berry the final frontier’ www.flickr.com/photos/rustymarvin/sets/72157625452602501/

Conclusion
Bokeh or 'bo-ke' should be at least one object in focus, whilst over contain enough detail to represent what they are. E.g. you should with little effort be able to view the background items and assimilate what they are.

This then begs the question what does the sparkling lights have to do with Bokeh and when does it become Depth of Field (DoF).

Leaf Bokeh, DoF or Impressionist?