There’s a group of photographers out there who would look at the lead image of this article and complain about the bokeh not being smooth instead of how beautiful the overall image is. They wouldn’t be able to appreciate that this photograph has texture to it and that it looks good because of the composition, the model, the work the photographer did with the model, and the way that the colors are rendered. Instead, they’d harp on all the stupid technical things about the photograph. One of those stupid technical things that went the way of the dinosaur is onion bokeh. But the truth is that onion bokeh wasn’t a problem. And honestly, no one cared about it being a problem ever.
Onion bokeh is one of the reasons why I believe so many people love vintage lenses. The way the elements were polished probably gives off a look that more resembles a crystal instead of actual clear glass.
I’m going to say something to the fact that so many people find onion bokeh to be distracting. It wasn’t distracting. If it was distracting to you then you probably didn’t know how to compose or light a scene effectively. And instead of blaming the gear you probably should’ve learned how to shoot photos instead of making content to please an algorithm that can’t smile at your work.
To some of you, that may sound harsh. But in reality, no one ever complained about onion bokeh in the images of Cartier Bresson, Susan Meisalas, Gordon Parks, Jamel Shabazz, etc. Why? Because their images were about people first. The gear came second. The images these photographers made wouldn’t be made better with modern optics. Instead, they were too busy shooting and making photographs instead of making content to please algorithms.
Every time I see onion bokeh in images, I see texture that I miss. Older Sony, Minolta, Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Olympus, Leica, and Zeiss glass all had it. And in each and every single instance, it looked great.
The image on the left was done with an older Zeiss 135mm f2 Apochromatic lens. And I really have to say this: who cares that there’s onion when I made an image that looks this great way back in the day when I reviewed this lens?
Fetishizing reality kills art. And removing character from lenses kills art and majorly affects creative vision. But of course, that isn’t good for capitalism, is it?
I truly wish that onion bokeh would make a comeback to add texture to images that’s sorely lacking these days.