How do you define bokeh? Which attached lens digital compact camera produces a pleasing bokeh? Do any of them?

Question

Bokeh is a weird topic for some photographers. It leans to an almost philosophical conversation sometimes.

For me, pleasing bokeh is a blurry background that is creamy and does not distract.

I have a Leica R SLR with the 50mm Summicron. And I also have a Canon USM 50mm F/1.4. They are both nice, but I prefer the Summicron Bokeh.

Thanks Dr. Sam,

That is the same sort of findings I am having with digital point and shoots. Extremely short focal lengths and "disc film" size sensors do nothing to produce bokeh.

Answer 1

While not as good as a DSLR, a camera such as the Nikon P7000 is going to be the best you will be able to do. It has manual and aperture priority modes, among others, which is necessary for getting good background blur. And it has a f/2.8 lens, although it is variable to f/5.6 depending on the zoom, so the focal length you use will determine how limited the depth-of-field is. You can even manually focus the lens - a rare feature on a compact camera, which can aid in background blur for the camera's limitation (can set the focus point forward of your subject). It even has a semi-mechanical shutter if you can believe that. While these things can help in a limited depth-of-field, they don't necessarily provide good bokeh, which are two different things. But the street price is $400, and I don't think you will find much for your budget.

Answer 2

Good question. I can see a kaleidoscope effect being posible with a tube that fits over a lens, but I dont know about the Bokeh. I am not really familiar with that, but I dont think a sleeve to fit over the p&s lens will work. Getting the right focus, even with a tube filled with lenses, adjusted right...???

But, I have been really wrong before. I thought the lens babies were gimmicks when I first saw them, but I see more and more people with them, or discussing them.

IF someone can figure it out, that would be great.

Answer 3

MM, you are a regular here, so I will spare you my full-blown stock answer on bokeh. Plus, for God's sakes, you own a Summicron lens, so who can tell YOU anything about it!!!?!

However...

The problem with attached lens compact cameras is the sensor size more than the lens. Due to "crop factors" or "lens factors" caused by these small sensors, the actual lenses used are in the 6-to-maybe-20 mm range for most of the cameras. You know how little bokeh you can achieve with those focal lengths. In addition to that, you often have only ONE aperture! It varies as you zoom the lens in or out, since it is a ratio of the focal length. They achieve a reduction in light by electronic manlipultion to "effectively" cut the aperture down by half in many of the less expensive cameras. By "less expensive," I mean pretty much all but the cream of the crop. I have a Nikon Coolpix 5400 sitting here that came out as a $1,000 camera. Even at that price, the thing actually has only ONE aperture that is electronically altered as needed.

So, here is part of my stock answer about how to get some fuzziness with a small sensor camera... You already know all of this stuff intuitively, but you may not have put it to practical use with a compact digital camera.

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In other words, if you WANT to defocus the background, you are going to have to work pretty hard at it. You would have to zoom to the longer end of the lens and set the aperture open as wide as it will go, if your camera even allows you to control the aperture, and get pretty close to your main subject while having the background a fair distance away.

Put your subjects quite a distance in front of any background that will be visible in your photo. You could use a garden of flowers and stand your subjects 20 yards or so in front of them. Try the portrait mode to shift things towards a larger aperture, zoom the lens out all the way, and move YOURSELF backwards or forwards in order to frame the picture as you would like it. In summary, you want to use a longer telephoto length, position yourself as close as you can to the main subject to compose properly, and place the main subject as far from the background that you wish to have out of focus as you possibly can.

The bigger the sensor, the easier it will be to achieve pleasing bokeh. This means moving to a dSLR, which all have sensors about 20 times bigger than the typical P&S digicam. If you want to really go for brokeh (very bad pun intended), you can get a Canon 5D and you will get exactly the same effect you are accustomed to in a 35 mm camera, since the sensor is the same size as 35 mm film.

Here is an example with a point and shoot camera, although it does have the larger sensor (1/1.8") that makes it easier to blur the background. Even though this is macro mode and f/2.8, where the background should blur the most, it's not terribly blurry because it's relatively close to the subject.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/872732755/

Here is an example with a point and shoot camera, so it CAN be done. The background is much farther away, though, and this is the larger sensor size.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/843563558/

See also: http://www.flickr.com/groups/dof/ and see if there are any groups by camera or camera type.

Answer 4

I prefer catadioptric lens bokeh because I love donuts...