The Online Photographer

The three people who introduced the Japanese idea of "bokeh" to the Western photography enthusiast community were John Kennerdell, Oren Grad, and Harold Merklinger. My part in it was that I published their articles, and commissioned Oren's and Harold's. As a lens enthusiast hobbyist for a number of years, I also got rather too obsessed with the aesthetics of the bokeh rendition of lenses, and probably discussed it in forums and and published articles to excess.

So this might sound very odd coming from me, but, as I look at amateur, enthusiast, and hobbyist pictures all over everywhere on the Internet and in books and on display, the single technical mistake that ruins more amateur photographs than anything else is: focus problems. Not enough depth of field (D-o-F). Not enough of the main subject in focus. Imperfect placement of the plane of focus is also common.

I really dislike showing, or linking to, actual work as examples. It seems unkind to single out specific photographers to hold up as negative examples; I'm uncomfortable even appearing to shame or ridicule others. So I'll just describe three random pictures that I happened across yesterday. All are digital JPEGs taken with decent ILCs, posted online at a photo-sharing site.

—> In one, an object is being thrown off a bridge, in full sun. The picture is taken from the ground and shows: the object in the air; the bridge; two people rendered relatively small up on the bridge looking down at the falling object; and, in the foreground, several waterfowl standing on the bank. The birds aren't large in the frame—they're still reasonably far from camera position—but because of perspective they're rendered significantly larger than the people up in the corner of the frame on the bridge. Although it looks very much like the photographer had positioned him- or herself so as to include the birds in the composition, they're well out of focus. The picture was taken at ISO 500, 1/4000th, and with an ƒ/1.4 lens at  ƒ/2.4. In other words, there was plenty of room in the camera settings to have used a smaller aperture and gotten the birds in the D-o-F, while still retaining enough shutter speed to freeze the falling object. (Generally, falling objects in the middle distance, especially when viewed at an angle while still accelerating, rather than directly from the side in full freefall, require no more than 1/1000th to freeze the action, and that includes a "safety factor.")

—> In the next, not by the same photographer, the subject is stone columns holding up a structure, a bridge or a pier. Again, full sunlight, and there's no action anywhere, nothing moving. We don't see any sky except a little through the columns, so no moving clouds even. Everything is sharp save one thing. Along the entire left-hand edge of the picture is a fat strip showing the edge of the closest stone column, not particularly close to the camera. It's jarringly out of focus, with poor "front bokeh." Why? Why wouldn't you simply stop down a stop or two, or recompose a bit?

—> In the last, again by a different photographer, we're seeing a scene by the side of a raised highway, looking down the long view parallel to the highway. Again, full daylight. The natural features form a sort of visual gully or halfpipe. The picture area mostly comprises the side of the embankment on the left, plenty of foreground, and scraggly woods and brush on the right hand side, which altogether makes up well over half of the image area, maybe even two-thirds. In the distance, in the center of the composition (and possibly the location of a central point of focus indicator), we see a rise with many buildings and their surroundings, rendered very small in the frame. The distant buildings are in focus, and everything in the middle distance and closer, all of the foreground, all of the embankment, and all of the woods on the right, are out of focus, but not pleasingly so. The comments say, "Nice!" and "Good capture" and so forth. I can't see any redeeming quality or subject matter in the picture at all, or in the composition or lack of it, but of course it would be impolite to say so.

These aren't exceptions; it sometimes seems to me that half the pictures I see have the PFP disease.

The poor focus problem has been made worse by the fact that in recent years, shallow D-o-F has become a signifier of the ownership of large-sensor cameras and large, expensive, fast lenses, such that the poor focus problem morphed into a status issue. And you know how those humans are when it comes to status-signifying.  :-)  Another thing making it worse is the increasingly common but wrongheaded idea that if you pay for a lens with a large maximum aperture, you should use that aperture all the time or as much as possible.

We definitely need an adjustment. A picture needs the right D-o-F, not the least possible D-o-F.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

jt: "Preach, brother! I think I made this same comment before on TOP, but I have a cookbook where nearly every photo has very narrow D-o-F, and it drives me crazy. These are illustrations. I want to see the food. All of the food."

Norm Snyder: "Interesting thoughts here. They are timely, in my case, as I recently acquired a fast 90mm lens to use for some performance photography. It's decently sharp wide open at ƒ/2, but it definitely works better stopped down a stop, so as to get, for example, the eyes, nose and mouth of a subject all in focus.

"I should have learned. I once owned an 85mm ƒ/1.2 lens for some Canon gear I was then using, and thought it was wonderful, until I looked carefully at images of a performer, shot from perhaps six feet away, in which the eyes were sharp and the tip of the nose well out of focus. It turned out to be a very heavy 85mm ƒ/4 lens."

Steve W: "Thank you, I really enjoyed this, and agree. I think this is why I enjoy using my iPhone so much: no D-o-F issues, lol. (And I can, if I want, control D-o-F after the picture is taken)."

Doug Anderson: "I have the same reaction to photographs that get the near-far focus relationships wrong. I have settled on two simple rules for my own work: 1.) Nothing closer to the camera than the principal subject should be noticably out of focus. 2.) If there is more than one principle subject, e.g. in a group portrait, none of them should be noticeably out of focus. If I can't avoid either of these problems, I don't take the picture."

Dave: "Using the widest aperture just because you have a fast lens—especially with the high ISO speeds of digital cameras—is like driving routinely at top speed in your sports car. You just get fewer tickets, that's all."

Kodachromeguy: "Don't forget the BS belief that more out of focus means the photo has better bokeh. The characteristics of the out of focus portions of the picture are not important, just the total surface area. Sigh...."

Stan B.: "I understand why you don't want to single out unsolicited examples for criticism. But it is important people understand when they are making mistakes in order to grow, mistakes they are very often completely unaware of. I remember when you commented that I had a very original color rendering on a certain photo—or something to that effect. I remember laughing, and very much appreciating such an 'original' (and kind) way of telling me that my color sense needed some real work. It's something I struggle with to this day, but at least I am now no longer oblivious to it...."

B.J.Scharp: "As happens so often in the modern world, many people confuse 'good' with 'a lot.' You can use a slow lens stopped down, and still get 'good' bokeh, and use a fast lens wide open and get 'bad' bokeh."

Stephen S.: "I had a long-term photography gig that I was shooting with Micro 4/3 cameras with zoom lenses, and for a few days, just for fun, I also took a full-frame camera and an 85mm ƒ/1.4, which of course I shot wide-open or close to it, because that would be most different from my other camera setup.

"A few days after submitting the photos, the person I was shooting for called me and was very concerned, telling me that my photos were 'out of focus.' I was surprised by this, as I always reviewed my photos and deleted all the misses and duds before sending them along. After a bit of back-and-forth discussion, and getting the offending photos sent back to me, I discovered they were all the shallow full-frame shots, and even though the close eye of the subjects was tack sharp in all of them, if the far eye was out of the depth-of-field, that led the editor to call the photo 'out of focus.'

"You don't argue with the tastes of the person commissioning you, and, faced with the choice of shooting Micro 4/3 at ƒ/4 or ƒ/5.6, or full-frame at ƒ/8 or ƒ/11, I left the full-frame camera behind."