D.O.F. and O.O.F.

click photo to enlarge

There seems to be some confusion surrounding the word "acronym". It is widely believed to be the use of consecutive initials. I've seen BBC and RSA so described. However, these are initialisms, "a group of initial letters used as an abbreviation for a name or expression, each letter or part being pronounced separately" (OED). An acronym is, "a word formed from the initial letters of other words" (OED). So, CIA isn't one because those three letters don't make a proper and pronounceable word, but AIDS certainly is (acquired immune deficiency syndrome). Confusion arises when we come to words such as radar (radio detection and ranging).  Isn't "radar", we might legitimately ask, almost but not quite an acronym, because it's an instance where the OED rule doesn't fully work? The fact is, that in the attempt to clearly define categories of words we've gone part way down the road to complete clarity by introducing ever more esoteric groupings, but have lost the value of a basic rule, not quite covered every eventuality, and sown more than a small degree of confusion. As this article shows.

Photography, like many other areas of special interest, is plagued by initialisms, acronyms and other kinds of abbreviations, to the extent that when I'm reading an article I sometimes feel the need for a glossary alongside me. It gets worse if you frequent photography forums because there you come up against all of this, but overlaid with examples of text-speak. One that has arisen in recent years is dof, DOF or D.O.F., meaning depth of field. (Whether we should continue to use full stops to indicate abbreviations or dispense with them, in the modern manner, is another subject for another day!) I think this has come about as people who have known only digital photography have moved from the once ubiquitous small sensor digicams to cameras with Four Thirds, APS-C and 35mm sensors. The depth of field of a small sensor is very big so oof (or OOF or O.O.F.), that is to say out of focus areas (also now called bokeh), are more difficult to achieve. With such cameras, if you want lens blur, you tend to have to either get very close to the subject or use a long telephoto. Larger sensors can achieve it in these ways too, but also by increasing the aperture. A consequence of all this is that shallow DOF shots have become very popular, so have large aperture lenses, and the value of a deep DOF - one of the challenges we sometimes struggled to achieve in the days of 35mm and larger film cameras - is currently less valued.

I was reflecting on this as I used my macro lens to take this very shallow depth of field shot of our oriental lilies. I photographed our white ones last year. This year we have red/brown and pink blooms as well as white. Out of the few shots I took this one intrigued me because the OOF areas resemble a liquid - perhaps pea soup - out of which the stigma and anthers are barely projecting.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  +0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Bokeh, OOF and glass

click photo to enlarge

Sometimes I think that we live in an increasingly casual world. Casual has its upside, certainly, but it can have disadvantages too. Written English is slowly (and in some circles rapidly) casting off the structures and formalities that the twentieth century inherited from the Victorian age. Spoken English is following a similar course. And where language goes dress by and large follows, though in some areas such as weddings the past twenty years has seen the re-appearance of garments last seen during the Edwardian era. But it's the changes in the technical language associated with photography that has exercised me of late.

I can live with the introduction of bokeh, a Japanese word meaning the way a lens renders the out of focus areas of a photograph. It's a single word that describes something that takes several words in English. What I can't manage though is the use of OOF for "out of focus". This word/abbreviation, one that is better kept for the sound of exhaled air that accompanies a punch in the stomach, makes frequent appearances in photography forums. It hasn't yet, as far as I know, made the leap into formal written texts, but it can only be a matter of time. Perhaps it is the pervasiveness of "text speak" that makes it seem acceptable. However, the modern usage that really stirs me up is the word "glass" instead of "lens" or "lenses". I think it's the cliquish familiarity that annoys me most. It shouldn't, I know, but it does!

Today's photograph of a distant Wisbech factory seen through a wire fence that had green netting fixed to it prompted today's reflection. When I looked at it on the compter screen I thought to myself, "I like the OOF bokeh that my choice of glass produced in this image." Or words to that effect.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/205
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Earrings and bokeh

click photo to enlarge

My first SLR, bought around 1972 was a 35mm Zenith E with a 58mm f2 lens, a Russian-made camera, all an impecunious student could afford. But, compared with the pocket camera that I had been using up to that point, it offered me so much more. The low-light abilities were streets ahead of cheaper cameras, and the shallow depth of field that the lens allowed opened up greater creative possibilities.When I bought a 135mm lens I felt that most of the subjects I wanted to photograph were within my grasp.

In those days I favoured black and white, and in time did quite a bit of my own printing. When it came to portraits I really made use to the out-of-focus capabilities of the camera and its lenses. At that time the word "bokeh" to describe this blur wasn't used in English-speaking photographic circles. In fact, I didn't hear it until about ten years ago, though I read that it was first used outside Japan several years earlier. This ability to blur the background is one of the things that anyone transferring from a digital compact camera with a small sensor to a DSLR with a larger sensor notices and appreciates. Some people make the transition simply to achieve this quality that they have seen and want to emulate. But the fact is many small sensor cameras are capable of producing out-of-focus blur (or bokeh). Models with wide or normal focal length lenses can often do it when set to macro, and so-called "bridge" cameras with their very long telephotos can do it at longer focal lengths  as well as in macro mode.

Today's photograph is a case in point. It was taken using my LX3 in macro mode with the lens at its widest (24mm/35mm equiv.) very close to the subject. The f2 lens and the 43 sq.mm sensor produce an extremely shallow depth of field in these circumstances, which for some subjects produces interesting and pleasing effects. My image shows a pair of my wife's earrings. They are made from the "eyes" of a couple of moulted peacock tail  feathers with beads fixed to the barbs. I placed them on a sheet of black vinyl for the photograph, and was pleased by the detail the lens revealed and the pleasant bokeh, particularly in the curves of beads of the more distant of the two earrings.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 160
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On