Bokeh Wars

The second I heard Nikon introduced a new $2500 lens that "made great bokeh," I stepped out into my front yard and created this "bokeh" with a $5 Minolta 58mm f/1.4 lens.
The second I heard Nikon introduced a new $2500 lens that “made great bokeh,” I stepped out into my front yard and created this “bokeh” with a $5 Minolta 58mm f/1.4 lens.

I hope my readers forgive me if I seem a little cynical about this topic: bokeh.

This week’s big photographic news is Nikon’s introduction of a new lens called “Plena,” a 135mm f/1.8 lens that promises, according to early releases, “beautiful, well-rounded bokeh,” among other things.

It is a reminder that this one word, “bokeh,” has taken photography to a place that resembles a fetish.  Photographers, mostly the photographers who make a living talking about photography rather than actually being photographers, can’t shut up about “bokeh.”

They trot out terms like “bokeh balls”, “buttery bokeh”, “creamy bokeh”, “dreamy bokeh”, even “insane bokeh”, and on and on. Almost all of their photography consists of making pictures to show which lenses make better bokeh, or how to make bokeh itself, which, if you understand the term, isn’t even a real thing.

What offends me so much about this is the idea that it creates a culture of buying creativity, which anyone with a soul knows is ideologically impossible and socially poisonous.

Here is the bottom line, one the YouTubers and camera makers don’t want to hear: once you have figured out how to use selective focus and bokeh, you can put those skills into your toolbox and stop talking about them. I figured out these techniques very early in my career, and use them when I need them, ignore them when I don’t need them, and never, ever worry about what I should buy to, well, make me a better person.

Yeah, bokeh. Too easy, too overdone. And before you ask, this "bokeh" was generated using a 35-year-old Nikkor 85mm f/2.0.
Yeah, bokeh. Too easy, too overdone. And before you ask, this “bokeh” was generated using a 35-year-old Nikkor 85mm f/2.0.