It is sometimes pronounced / ˈ b oʊ k ə/ BOH-kə. The spellings bokeh and boke have both been in use since at least 1996, when Merklinger had suggested 'or Bokeh if you prefer.' The term bokeh has appeared in photography books as early as 1998. The English spelling bokeh was popularized in 1997 in Photo Techniques magazine, when Mike Johnston, the editor at the time, commissioned three papers on the topic for the May/June 1997 issue he altered the spelling to suggest the correct pronunciation to English speakers, saying 'it is properly pronounced with bo as in bone and ke as in Kenneth, with equal stress on either syllable'. The related term bokashi ( 暈かし) means intentional blurring or gradation that is a noun form of the transitive verb bokasu ( 暈す), which means to make something blurry, rather than to be blurry. Tobokeru means playing dumb, and toboketa kao refers to a poker face. Nebokeru ( 寝ぼける) is a verb denoting the actions or condition of someone who is half-asleep, or nodding off. Jisaboke ( 時差ボケ) (literally, 'time difference fog') is the term for jet lag. This is derived as a noun form of the verb bokeru, which is written in several ways, with additional meanings and nuances: 暈ける refers to being blurry, hazy or out-of-focus, whereas the 惚ける and 呆ける spellings refer to being mentally hazy, befuddled, childish, senile, or playing stupid. The term comes from the Japanese word boke ( 暈け/ボケ), which means 'blur' or 'haze', resulting in boke-aji ( ボケ味), the 'blur quality'. The opposite of bokeh-an image in which multiple distances are visible and all are in focus-is deep focus. However, bokeh is not limited to highlights blur occurs in all regions of an image which are outside the depth of field. Photographers may deliberately use a shallow focus technique to create images with prominent out-of-focus regions, accentuating their lens's bokeh.īokeh is often most visible around small background highlights, such as specular reflections and light sources, which is why it is often associated with such areas. Some lens designs blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others produce distracting or unpleasant blurring ('good' and 'bad' bokeh, respectively). Differences in lens aberrations and aperture shape cause very different bokeh effects. Bokeh has also been defined as 'the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light'. In photography, bokeh ( / ˈ b oʊ k ə/ BOH-kə or / ˈ b oʊ k eɪ/ BOH-kay Japanese: ) is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in out-of-focus parts of an image.

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