Originally posted by granitic -snip-
Now my question: what is "BOKEH"? I just have not come across this term until recently, and I hate being ignorant of technical terminology. My dictionary doesn't help either.
Bokeh can be used for short for "the quality of the rendering of the out of focus areas".
Examples:
"I think this picture has good bokeh" equals to "I think the quality of the rendering of the out of focus ares in this picture is good".
"Ouch, that's some harsh bokeh!" equals to "Yikes, the OOF areas in this picture are really rendered in an ugly way" (=bad bokeh obviously, meaning that the OOF areas are distracting and thus lessens the value of the picture as the subject gets less attention, the eyes are dragged away from what the real subject).
Thinking of bokeh this way let's you avoid traps. "What a lot of bokeh" or "Is this bokeh?" or "Bokeh example:" are all examples of a slightly wrong way to use the word.
A lens capable of rendering the OOF areas nice and smooth can be said to have good bokeh. This is often the same as rendering the OOF areas in a way that lets the beholder look at the picture and not think much about anything else in it but the subject, a picture with one technical flaw less.
All this in my humble opinion only of course.