Too much bokeh?

[Banewood]

Can a lot of bokeh be a bad thing? I thought that this macro of a thistle bloom looked nice, but then someone told me all of the bokeh detracted from the picture.



Lens: Canon EF-S60mm f/2.8 Macro USM shooting at f/5.6

[Doug Sundseth]

For me, it's not the amount or quality of blur that is your problem here, it's the contrasty nature of the background. The complexity and brightness of the spots in the background tend to draw my eye away from the subject. With a smoother background, your thistle would draw more attention.

The other thing I noticed is that the DoF is so shallow here* that, for me at least, too much of the thistle is falling too far out of focus. If more of the subject were in focus, you might have more separation of the subject from the background.

* DoF of a 60mm lens at 6" and f/5.6 is .03" (Online Depth of Field Calculator).

[Banewood]

That's great information... thanks. Appreciate the pointer to the DOF calculator... will have to see if there's an "App" for that.

[alphavalues]

I'm very happy with Photo Tools Pro on my android, I believe they've got an IOS version as well.

[Banewood]

I found Photo Tools Pro for the iPhone (Photo Tools Pro for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store), but it's $10. Perhaps it's worth it, though.
I settled on PhotoBuddy (PhotoBuddy for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store), but I'll reserve judgement until I've played with it some more.
I think that using something like this is bound to help me, though. Thanks everyone.

[i speak in math]

And just to remind you all, bokeh is the quality of the out-of-focus area. Don't confuse out-of-focus, depth-of-field and bokeh; they don't mean the same thing. Bokeh is similar to describing the taste of a bottle of wine. Saying "too much bokeh" is like saying "this wine tastes too much". It just doesn't make sense.

[JFSanders]

Atta boy to I speak math! Your circles of confusion have seven sides and as such the quality of the OOF area is not as nice as it would be with a 9 sided aperture. This of course is subjective in the extreme, but as the human eye sees round COC as natural this odd shape is what bothers your viewer. And the relative brightness of the white ones cause the eye to focus on them before they see the flower.

Jim

[Banewood]

Sorry for the careless use of the term "bokeh."

With your criticisms in mind, I went back to the series of shots that I took, and I found one that doesn't have as much distraction in the background. I think these results are better:

[Ett]

The background looks better here, but what's bugging me a bit is that not enough of the thistle is clear. Your DoF is way too shallow to be this close to the plant. Close your aperture up a little so that more of the subject you're photographing is in focus

[Banewood]

Yeah, you're right about the shallow DoF. Only way to rescue this show would be to rotate and crop down to just the bloom. Ultimately, I'm going to start putting more effort into using more narrow apertures.
Thanks for the critiques.