35mm adaptors look fake

[Alex Chong]

majority of people who watch a film will not be too concern with how the bokeh looks on a movie. If everyone is saying bokeh like the movie shot by Wayne with the SGpro r2 and HVX200 is bad, on what basis is it bad? compared to a normal 35mm film? That comparison is really subjective. I like the way the light blurred and it wouldn't make me think any other way if it blurred exactly like a 35mm film. But then again I am only an observer. But aren't most people? Maybe we shouldn't be too bogged down with getting the bokeh right or exactly like film. As Bob said, the bokeh is unique to 35mm DOF adaptor as the other bokeh is unique to a 35mm film. Just my thought.

[Toenis Liivamaegi]

Most of us are just used to see that physical (im)perfection caused by film or imaging sensors that we are calling prefect sharp-edged diffusion. It is a byproduct that couldn`t be avoided physically. Most photographers including me are just so used to it.
Sure it is desirable to use Bokeh for artistic impressions sometimes but that`s nothing that must be accomplished in the first hand.

When I started to lecture about depth of field and how it can be used in videography using DOF adaptor I found out that with the exeption of former photographers nobody didn`t care about bokeh quality because everybody were concerned about how to tell the story and how to realize all the benefits of this kind of new medium for video students for example.

As long as content, it`s creator and it`s so called consumer won`t benefit from exact replication of real film physical properties it is by all means not neccessary to worry about it.

There is one technical aspect of almost all difusors used in DOF adaptors with lens attached: It must equal light loss of circa f4 to form that diffusion what we`re used to. Some diffusors will lose that much light and will give that bokeh quality even when the lens attached is wide open and others that will give the quality bokeh when the lens are closed to f4. So the creator can choose which route he want`s to go.

I have a sneaking feeling that Wyne`s creation is a perfect balance between the rule described above and sure the content creator can benefit from almost perfect DOF adaptor such as SGpro.

Best regards,
T

[Juro Stehlik]

Originally Posted by Wayne Kinney

The blur effect or 'bokeh' render with the new GG seems to match film very well. The blurring of the fence here is a nice example:

http://www.rimeligok.no/pentax-fru.jpg

http://www.rimeligok.no/pentax-fru2.jpg

The guys that make the SGpro's GG are an external optics company specialised in optical filters, they know their stuff and this was part of their design. I actually dont know to much technical on it, but they tell me its down to the diffussion properties.

Wayne, i really like your bokeh. Didnt you think about selling GG separately for people, who cant afford SGpro?

[Wayne Kinney]

I've sold a few recently via requests, not sure if im going to make to available or not yet.

[Juro Stehlik]

I've sent you mail on your info(at)sgpro.co.uk address:)

[Donnie Wagner]

Originally Posted by Ben Winter

It's always been my understanding that the wording "poor bokeh" is just a labeling term and not actually a catigorization of the quality. I, for instance, find that particular bokeh very appealing. If I'm not mistaken, I've definately seen that type of bokeh before on the big screen in theaters. Although it's very common, one example I can remember of bokeh speculars on bigtime movies with hard, defined edges (which that site seems to regard as "poor bokeh") was the streetlights and light sources behind the closeups of Denzel Washington's head in "Inside Man" when he is in the SUV with Jodie Foster.

If the goal is what that website refers to as "good bokeh," then many of the people complaining of bokeh quality would be well satisfied with less diffusive focusing screens that many here have already discarded as poor diffusers with "bad bokeh." The Beattie screen, for instance, which has been downplayed on this thread (and for good reason) as a poor focusing screen for bokeh, actually renders the Fig. 3 bokeh as described on the webpage.

Ben:
I agree that "poor" "neutral" and "good" are not absolute terms. But according to this article, unevenly illuminated bokeh-discs like in fig. 1 (which is what I see in Wayne's christmas light demo) is an indication of spherical aberration caused by the 35mm lens, and "neutral" bokeh in Fig.2 is an indication of little to no spherical aberration. Also interesting to note that a given lens will produce differnt types of bokeh in the foreground than background.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/bokeh.htm

Wayne:
Were the Christmas lights shot out of focus in the foreground? I'm just curious if it's true what the article says about aberration?

Of course none of this matters, like Ben noted bokeh is subjective.

[James Adams]

What that website explains is what a good bokeh "artistically" should look like. I believe that is wrong especially in the case of telling a story in a movie because we don't want that type of distraction. The 35mm adapters do take away from the feel, not only to me. I have heard comments about the way it looks and have asked people what it is that makes it feel different. Most don't really know and it might not be because of the way the 35mm adapters blur the image, but I have heard straight forward comments about the way the "blur" looks.

It's kind of annoying that a lot of people here act like they are the only ones able to see these differences just because they're the ones making it. That's ridiculous! People are very observant, some not as much, and they do notice if something looks strange to them. Even if they don't know what it is.

The look we've been trying to achieve since the beginning of filmmaking is the look our eye would see if we were to leave it in a stationary position and be able to capture images. I'm not trying to start another discussion, but that's the same reason 60p looks awful. Have you ever looked out the window when you are on the freeway and let, lets say trees, pass your eyes without letting them move back and forth? It has a nice blur to it, similar to the look of 24fps. With 60p it's an unnatural smoothness and not similar to your eyes. Why would it be different with bokeh? We want things to look and feel as our own eyes would and the engineers should keep that in mind when designing a product.

The 35mm adapters are a nice tool for learning how to use shallow DOF in a video, but the look is still very amateur, and a should not be the look in a feature.

Wayne's footage does look better than the others I've seen, but that only depends if those lights are in the foreground or background.

[Thomas Richter]

Something to add to the good bokeh, bad bokeh discussion. The article says you don't want bad bokeh, because the background image is not sufficiently blurred. Yet Wayne's posting of Theodoros' footage of the christmas lights renders very nice apperture discs as seen in Hollywood films such as American Pie.

Can we get a hybrid of both? Yes I think so. Look at this 150% crop of a picture I posted in another thread (SGPro R2 + FX1). The highlights show great little apperture discs (the bad type) yet the rest is nicely blurred.

Maybe this is only possible with a 35mm adapter (and we would finally have 1 advantage over real film apart from lower costs & reduced editing effort).

Call it fake, I love it :-)

(just humorous, no offence intended)

[Dylan Couper]

You guys all know that the average movie goer tends to relate the term "bokeh" to a bunch of flowers, right? In fact, if your movie is so damn bad that the viewers go "ugh, this bokeh looks like a bad 35mm adapter," then you should probably list your gear on Ebay and beg for a job shuffling fries at Burger King.

In the list of things that make video not look like film, the bokeh from a 35mm adapter is very very very near the bottom, especially with the alternative being NOT using and adapter and going back to the video DOF which kills your film look alltogether.

[Ben Winter]

The point is to emulate film, because film is what people are used to. If you get anything else, just give up because all you'll be doing is distracting your audience.

[James Adams]

Like I said before, it's just a tool and does have it's benifits. I will say it does look better than a infinite DOF, but it does look wrong and it is wrong because it's not what your own eye would see. I guess you could say that it has it's "artistic" purposes or whatever.

It's nice that we can play around with these toys for now and use them to show some depth in our work and I am happy that people like Wayne realize it is a problem. Given enough time we'll all have cameras with nice big censors that give us a shallow DOF, but for now a lot of people here are stuck with their HD cams with huge DOF and the only way to fix it is by these apapters. I'm just saying it sucks it has to look so fake.

[James Adams]

Ben,

It's true people don't like change, but people also want things to look as real as possible. Having a fake looking blur does not look real. Film doesn't perfectly match the human eye and nothing will, but it is close and the bokeh you get with film and proper lenses does very closely match the eye.

We shouldn't settle and say 'it looks ok, nobody will notice' if we don't have to.

Talk with any large network or producer/director and they will tell you the same thing. Things have to look REAL

[James Adams]

This doesn't really show the differences between 35mm adapters and film, just the differences you get with lenses alone. Not really the subject of disscusion, but it's cool.

http://www.rickdenney.com/bokeh_test.htm

[Ben Winter]

Originally Posted by James Adams

Ben,

It's true people don't like change, but people also want things to look as real as possible. Having a fake looking blur does not look real. Film doesn't perfectly match the human eye and nothing will, but it is close and the bokeh you get with film and proper lenses does very closely match the eye.

We shouldn't settle and say 'it looks ok, nobody will notice' if we don't have to.

Talk with any large network or producer/director and they will tell you the same thing. Things have to look REAL

It has nothing to do with looking real, the whole film effect is to create an alternate fantasy. Please, try to convince me our eyes see 24 fps, I dare you :)

My point is that film has been a standard for so long, people are just used to it's aesthetic. If we can make our footage look like it, there is less to draw the audience's attention away from the story because they just accept that level of grain, sharpness, depth of field etc as the medium of theatrical motion picture.

[James Adams]

Originally Posted by Ben Winter

It has nothing to do with looking real, the whole film effect is to create an alternate fantasy. Please, try to convince me our eyes see 24 fps, I dare you :)

My point is that film has been a standard for so long, people are just used to it's aesthetic. If we can make our footage look like it, there is less to draw the audience's attention away from the story because they just accept that level of grain, sharpness, depth of field etc as the medium of theatrical motion picture.

I agree with you. I never said our eyes see 24fps. Our eyes do not have a 'frame rate', but 24fps does have the closest effect to the human eye. Do your own tests. Take your camera and have someone drive a car. Hold the camera in a stationary position out of the window and film in 24fps with trees passing by. Now use your own eye and look in the same spot you were filming at and let the trees pass by your eye without letting your eye move. They look very similar. Try that with 60fps and its way to smooth, looks fake. Not real. This also leads back to my other thread '24p looks fake' which is not my point right now. I am sure this is why the 24fps was chosen for film because it looks the closest to our eyes.

This thread is about the blurred image of the 35mm adapters looking fake. All I am saying is that there is a reason people chose to have that look, maybe not the grain part so much, but the others yes. The look that the 35mm adapters give do not look very life like that's all. I just think that if these companies are able to make this GG better to look more real they should, but I guess these adapters are going to just be temporary solutions to those who cant afford the cost of film until we slowly start getting cheaper cameras with bigger censors.

Yes, people don't want to change what they are used to, but what they are used to is already pretty much what should be.