Tips for a successful photo book.

You may remember them, the notorious slide evenings of the past. You were overwhelmed by a lot of slides of only moderate quality, at which you had to look politely. And now we have a digital photo book. Will history repeat itself or will we see nice photo books? In this article, I will give some clues so you can surprise someone with an interesting book.

Bokeh is out of focus blur

The word 'boke' (ボケ味) originates from the Japanese language and is used to describe the blur in out of focus areas of an image. According to Wikipedia, a Western journalist changed the word into Bohkeh, in order to improve the pronounciation.
Bokeh indicates how the blur appears on parts of the picture beyond the focus plane. Bokeh is beautiful, when blurred parts on a photograph are of a fuzzy blur. The bokeh is not pretty, when you for instance see double lines at transitions from dark to light.

Bokeh quality cannot be quantified well and that is why we show practice examples of Bokeh in our lens reviews.

Adobe RGB better than s-RGB?  ProPhoto RGB even better?

It is difficult to describe colors in such a way, that each apparatus (digital camera, scanner, LCD screen, printer) reproduces colors correct. Ever had a print with disappointing colors? Then you already experienced that transferring color information between different devices is not as easy and straightforward as you would like it to be.
There are several ways to describe a color (using "color models" and "color spaces"). Well known color models are CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black), traditionally used by the press and RGB (red, green, blue) for cameras and LCD screens. Within the RGB model several color spaces exist, of which Adobe RGB, s-RGB and Prophoto RGB are most commonly known. The entire set of colors an apparatus can describe, is called an apparatus color space or gamut.

Camera calibration, useful or not?

Cameras describe colors as a mixture of red, green and blue (RGB). The amount of each color is described by a number. The number combination (0,0,255) equals a dark, saturated blue color and (128,128,128) represents middle gray. Just like with people, each apparatus registers a color just a little bit different than another apparatus. One camera will describe a specific color as (100, 240, 100), whereas another camera will describe exactly the same color as (0, 237, 40).
How is a printer or LCD screen to know which color to show you, if two different cameras produce such different numbers for exactly the same color?