Focal Lengthįirst: the focal length of the lens does not actually affect the depth of field. ( What!? Don’t fret, it’s not really that confusing.)īokeh doesn’t describe how out of focus the background is, only how nice it looks. There are two other things that don’t actually affect the depth of field, but they seem to. The closer the object is to the lens, and the wider the aperture, the shallower the depth of field. There are two factors that determine the depth of field: the aperture size, and the distance from the lens to the subject. The english word for “bokeh” is “bokeh” and among videographers, photographers and cinematographers, it’s commonly used. It’s sort of like saying “Godzilla” is a Japanese word describing a giant city-smashing monster that has no English equivalent.

Searching the Internet you might learn that “bokeh” is a Japanese word for describing the out of focus areas in an image which has no English equivalent, but that’s actually wrong. It’s inevitable that the more you learn about a topic the more detail you see in things. What was he noticing in my shot that I wasn’t? And what was that word, “bokeh”? It sounds like a Sunday morning cartoon. He looked at it briefly, grunted and said “that’s some mighty funky bokeh you got going on there.” And went back to whatever he was doing. I once showed a veteran cameraman a shot I was particularly proud of. This article talks about what determines bokeh and what makes one type more pleasing than another. As your grasp of videography grows, you’ll start to understand how you can control emotion and design through the use of depth of field.

Night time bokeh video