[alamo5000]

Thanks everyone for the excellent responses.

So far here are some of the stand out things that have been mentioned here. Hopefully I and others can apply this to their own photography. Please add to the list if you can think of anything.

Bokeh is not an art form unto itself.
Bokeh should compliment not detract from the main subject of the image.
Colors can make for good bokeh.
Lights 'can' make for good bokeh but it all depends on how they are used.
Be very mindful of the intensity of light.
In short watch not only your subject but the background as well. (The background is a photographic element as well)
Uneven lighting or 'bright spots' can be distracting.
Be mindful of small reflective surfaces and/or intense lights or a combination of all of the above.
Smooth bokeh seems to be preferred so choose your backgrounds wisely.
There is no 'rules' per se... they are more like 'guidelines'

Thanks again everyone.

I do want to say thank you for participating in my little experiment. I intentionally put a picture up that 'wasn't perfect' with the hopes to fish for responses. Yes, this was intentional. (Basically I think sometimes the forum gets too wrapped up in gear and less wrapped up in photography) That said I did in fact learn a whole lot through this so it wasn't entirely concocted... (only about 50%)

Now all that said is there anything I left out or that I might add to my list?

[clackers]

Obviously, for the smoothest, most abstract bokeh, subject is as close as you can get, background far away, with the longest lens and widest aperture as possible.


Can even be done on a phone, but it's f%*^%# hard work, and it's easier to use the phone or app's fake bokeh facility.

[Lowell Goudge]

Obviously, for the smoothest, most abstract bokeh, subject is as close as you can get, background far away, with the longest lens and widest aperture as possible.


Can even be done on a phone, but it's f%*^%# hard work, and it's easier to use the phone or app's fake bokeh facility.

This is actually not correct especially with shorter lenses. A far away background and a short lens leads in many cases to a confusing mess of small dots. It can work with telephoto lenses but NOT all lenses

[clackers]

This is actually not correct especially with shorter lenses.

Did I not say longer lenses were the go, Lowell?

But you can get smooth bokeh even with a 24mm lens!

[Rupert]

It can work with telephoto lenses but NOT all lenses

Precisely! This is why I set up my "Cheater Branch".....a limb I screwed on to a tree trunk in a position that will give nice bokeh at 500 mm with my 50-500 Bigma.

Shots with nice subjects but ugly backgrounds were disturbing me, so I worked a simple solution.


Instead of this...


I now get dozens of shots like this almost every day...

lickr.com/photos/1294











Here you can see where the cheater branch is screwed on to the tree trunk......a little peanut butter will attract a handsome squirrel!


With handsome squirrels bokeh isn't so important, people are more interested in viewing the main subject anyhow!

Smile for the camera!


If you go through the shots here you can see all the shots on the Cheater Branch, and some have some nice bokeh I was not previously getting.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/129469263@N03/albums/72157651162955781

It is easy to set up your own Cheater Branch for birdies and with a little testing you can arrange it for best results at a specific range where you can shoot easily. I shoot almost all mine out my office windows, so it is just a matter of aiming, focusing and shooting!

Of course, some of you are not as lazy as I am, but if you are...this works very nicely!

Some "purists" also have an aversion to cheating...but around here Otis considers cheating an admirable trait. I stick with Otis!


Regards!

[Lowell Goudge]

Did I not say longer lenses were the go, Lowell?

But you can get smooth bokeh even with a 24mm lens!

I should have been more precise. Far away background with short lenses creates confusing bokeh because the ratio between lens to subjec and lens to background makes the background seem smaller (lower magnification ratio) than foreground. You really need to watch this, I find with tele lenses, wide open the depth of field is narrow, hence the background can be very close and out of focus at the same time, and since you are moved further away with a tele lens from the subject, the difference in magnification between foreground and background is very little, resulting in proportionally much larger blotches than would be present using a wide angle lens,

With a wide angle lens you are moving closer with the camera for the same subject magnification, and moving the background away to compensate for the much greater DOF of a wide lens.

[clackers]

Sure. We've discussed all these factors, and I did this on a Samyang 24mm at f1.8. Not full frame, used my K-S1, in harsh lighting conditions:

[macman24054]

I prefer to use a telephoto over a normal or wide lens. I just like the look of bokeh with the compression that only a telephoto can give over just bokeh. Just my personal taste.

[alamo5000]

Precisely! This is why I set up my "Cheater Branch".....a limb I screwed on to a tree trunk in a position that will give nice bokeh at 500 mm with my 50-500 Bigma.

Shots with nice subjects but ugly backgrounds were disturbing me, so I worked a simple solution.

Rupert... I have to hand it to you... that is a simple yet brilliant solution!! If it works it ain't cheating. At least not in this situation

You're post is a textbook case of background selection.

---------- Post added 10-07-15 at 11:54 PM ----------

I prefer to use a telephoto over a normal or wide lens. I just like the look of bokeh with the compression that only a telephoto can give over just bokeh. Just my personal taste.

What do you mean 'compression'?

[Lowell Goudge]

What do you mean 'compression'?

By compression he is referring to the same point I made a few posts ago. Compression as Macman24054 refers to it, is a function of the magnification of the lens, for both foreground and background.

Take two photos of a subject where you move your position to fill the frame with both lenses you are going to use, and have a background another 5 meters behind it. One shot with a 24mm lens and the other with a 100mm lens.

After you shoot, look at the size of the background in the two photos. The background appears bigger relative to the subject using the 100mm tele, than the wide angle

This is what is meant when people talk about compression with tele photos. It really, as I explained in my post is the difference in magnification of foreground and background. The telephoto gives a higher magnification to the background than a wide angle lens, hence it appears to "compress" the distance

Mathematically, it can be shown when you look at the expression for image size of subjects more than perhaps 5-10x further away than the focal length

Image size = subject size x focal length / distance.

[clackers]

By compression he is referring to the same point I made a few posts ago. Compression as Macman24054 refers to it, is a function of the magnification of the lens, for both foreground and background.

Take two photos of a subject where you move your position to fill the frame with both lenses you are going to use, and have a background another 5 meters behind it. One shot with a 24mm lens and the other with a 100mm lens.

After you shoot, look at the size of the background in the two photos. The background appears bigger relative to the subject using the 100mm tele, than the wide angle

This is what is meant when people talk about compression with tele photos. It really, as I explained in my post is the difference in magnification of foreground and background. The telephoto gives a higher magnification to the background than a wide angle lens, hence it appears to "compress" the distance

Mathematically, it can be shown when you look at the expression for image size of subjects more than perhaps 5-10x further away than the focal length

Image size = subject size x focal length / distance.

Except that the lens hasn't 'compressed' anything, what's happened is that you as the photographer have altered the subject distance.


If you leave the distance the same, there's no compression, and a 100mm shot doesn't have any different view than a crop of a 50mm shot.

[macman24054]

I should have said lens compression. It is actually a form of lens distortion. Lens compression is essentially the phenomenon of background elements appearing larger than they actually are – hence the scene becomes “distorted” since those background elements appear closer and larger than they are in real life. That is why I use my DA* 50 to 135 for many of the portraits I shoot.

[BrianR]

Take two photos of a subject where you move your position to fill the frame with both lenses you are going to use, and have a background another 5 meters behind it. One shot with a 24mm lens and the other with a 100mm lens.

After you shoot, look at the size of the background in the two photos. The background appears bigger relative to the subject using the 100mm tele, than the wide angle

Just adding an example to illustrate this - scroll down to 'Background blur' at Depth of field. Especially note the difference between 'absolute' and 'relative' blur (there's tons of other great info on that site).

[Lowell Goudge]

Except that the lens hasn't 'compressed' anything, what's happened is that you as the photographer have altered the subject distance.


If you leave the distance the same, there's no compression, and a 100mm shot doesn't have any different view than a crop of a 50mm shot.

I know, I know, but I didn't invent the term. I agree 100%. Any two shots, when taken from the same spot on earth, have the exact same perspective. If you shoot with my example a 24mm and a 100mm and crop the 24mm shot to the same field of view as the 100mm and enlarge it to the same size, except for perhaps resolution issues the images are the exact same.

But the way people use ultra wides especially is to get really close to the subject, to exaggerate the foreground relative to the background.

That's just the way it is

[alamo5000]

Just an FYI Michael Freeman in his book The Photographer's Eye has an entire chapter devoted to this subject. Pages 100-105 a section called 'optics'. While not 'exactly' the same subject it does overlap a lot.