What is bokeh? Isolating a subject by blurring the background and foreground is a very common photographic technique, helping to focus the viewers attention by removing distracting detail behind or in front of the subject. This works great if the blurred background has a nice smooth and creamy look to it, but if background elements are rendered poorly, that rendering can itself call undue attention to them and interfere with your enjoyment of the image. Bokeh refers to how a lens renders out of focus objects. The shot above compares shots taken at f/22 (on the left) and at f/4 (on the right). This lens has fairly nice-looking bokeh. (Photo by Paul van Walree) The way a lens renders out of focus objects is commonly referred to as bokeh, or in japanese boke (暈け or ボケ), which means "blur" or "haze." At least among amateur photographers, bokeh was once a largely Japanese concern, an obscure thing that the Japanese photo dilettantes worried about, but that mos