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Onyx et al,

I am becoming an afficionado of bokeh. Funny, I never even looked or cared before, and now I find it is one of the first things I look at. I once shot with a 300d with the sigma 18-123 or whatever it is. I went back and looked at it and thought "what terrible bokeh". Since then I've gone through almost all of my shots and examined the bokeh. I've become obsessed now. I find it hard to appreciate movies because I'm watching for the Bokeh. (Great movie, cheap lens, horrible bokeh). By the way, the movie City of God though chalked full of pretty hardcore realistic violence, was full of beautiful bokeh. (It's about a young kid from the slums of Brazil who dreams of becoming a photographer, ends up being one of the only people able to go into a gang war and photograph the leaders etc. Amazing movie if you can stand all of the violence.)

I'm still a beginner though, and I don't know bokeh as good as some of you, but I feel like in a way I've been shown the light and saved(knowledge about bokeh) and ruined at the same time (can't enjoy the shot without checking out that bokeh).

It's horrible isn't it?! The more I learn (about anything in general, not just photography), the more I am convinced that ignorance is bliss.

I just watched an episode of The OC (it's a soapie for us young 'uns) and I saw in a night scene something that shocked me - the light sources look like bulging triangles (season 2 ep 2, the spring carnival scene for those playing at home). It seems movie cams have as few as three aperture blades!!

Bear in mind, being able to see shapes in light sources shot with a lens wide open is only one aspect of bokeh. The main constituent of "good" or "bad" bokeh is the rendition of bright points on darker surrounds. Ideally it should be round/circular, with light levels slowly fading out towards the edge, with the boundray between bright and dark indistinguisable.

Simply applying gaussian blur to an image to me is no bokeh at all. I observed in recent past, shooting Birddog's top end Nikkor lenses, the 105 f/2 DC renders bokeh especially well, with defocus control set slightly forward. The 70-200VR also tops my personal preference list. The 85/1.4 less so.