What is Bokeh? The Aesthetic of Out-of-Focus Light, Explained

Bokeh (derived from the Japanese word boke, meaning blur) refers to the aesthetic of the out-of-focus elements in an image. It’s most commonly used to describe the look of blurred points of light (usually in the background). Bokeh can range from creamy and circular to ugly, hexagonally shaped blobs riddled with distracting ‘onion-rings’.

Unfortunately this is one of the most misused terms in phone photography and it’s made all the more confusing by the fact that phone makers use the term to describe two very different things.

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Where the word came from

The Japanese term for blur or haze is boke (暈け or ボケ). An ‘h’ was added to avoid English speakers pronouncing it as though it rhymed with ‘broke’. It should be pronounced something like ‘boh-keh’ not ‘boh-kay’. The word bokeh made its way into English photography vocabulary via the 1997 issue of Photo Techniques magazine.

What creates bokeh

• Use a lens with a wide aperture (small f-number e.g. f/1.4, f/1.8, f/2.0)
• Use a longer focal length lens (85mm+). If shooting on a phone use 3× or 5× zoom
• Get close to your subject (while keeping them in frame!)
• Position your subject as far away from the background as possible
• Look for point light sources or specular highlights in the background
• Lenses with more aperture blades tend to have rounder apertures, and therefore produce rounder bokeh

Can you get real bokeh on a Samsung Galaxy?

You can get some. However, as phone sensors are quite small, you’ll never get that much optical bokeh no matter how wide the aperture. The lenses that get closest are the telephotos as they’re shooting from further away and magnifying a smaller section of the scene. Bokeh can also refer to the shape of blurred highlights and this is determined by the shape of the aperture. Apertures on current Galaxy phones aren’t variable (there’s no aperture ‘blade’ that opens and closes) and instead have a fixed shape. Whereas the 5x on the S25 Ultra had a rectangular aperture (and therefore rectangular bokeh for out-of-focus highlights), the 5x on the Galaxy S26 Ultra is ALoP with a circular aperture (therefore out-of-focus highlights are circles or ovals). Computational bokeh is then applied in Portrait Mode using a depth map.

The S26 Ultra’s main camera has a slightly wider f/1.4 aperture compared to the S25 Ultra’s f/1.7, although according to GSMArena both cameras use the same 1/1.3-inch sized sensor. This wider aperture delivers slightly more natural bokeh when photographing closer objects using the 1x camera, although you won’t be able to close the aperture down to increase depth of field. Refer to our S26 Ultra camera guide for more information. Our exposure triangle explainer shows the impact of using a fixed aperture on shutter speed and ISO.

Good bokeh vs bad bokeh

How to get the best bokeh on a Galaxy

• Use the 5× or 3× telephoto. This fills the frame from farther back and has a narrower FOV (less of the background is included).
• Move closer to your subject (1-2m works well, but don’t get so close your phone can’t focus, as Samsung quotes a minimum focus distance of 80cm for the S26 Ultra’s 5x).
• Move your subject farther away from the background if you can (3m+ if at all possible).
• Look for nice specular highlights in the background: fairy lights, street lamps, candles, sun filtering through leaves etc. The Christmas lights guide uses tree lights this way.
• Don’t set the amount of Portrait blur to maximum, because artefacts/errors in the depth map (particularly around hair) are more noticeable with strong bokeh.
• Specular highlights look nicer at night or during golden hour.

Common Portrait Mode bokeh failures

• Anything the person is holding (this sometimes gets blurred as well)
• Anything with thin elements (edges in hair sometimes look like they’ve been snipped with scissors because the algorithm isn’t able to tell where those individual hair strands are on the depth map)
• Inaccurate wrapping around a person (sometimes objects in the background will wrap around a person inaccurately)
• Glasses (sometimes only the lenses or only the frames will be blurred/sharp)
• Handles on things (like coffee cups) sometimes get left in the background and blurred

Reduce the amount of blurring first. According to Samsung’s Galaxy S26 user guide, you can also adjust the background effect of Portrait mode shots in Gallery after taking a photo. If your subject looks like it’s been cut out, try taking another photo in a well-lit area with a background that contrasts with your subject. See our Samsung Photo Editor guide for other suggestions for improvement.

Bokeh shapes you can create deliberately

If you want to experiment with bokeh effects, get a sheet of black card, cut out a shape (hearts, stars, snowflakes are good) and hold the card over the lens. This will modify the appearance of any out-of-focus highlights accordingly. This is a purely optical effect, so it won’t work with Portrait Mode bokeh. For best results, use the 3× or 5× lenses and shoot at night. For a different kind of fake blur, our tilt-shift guide adds a band of blur using Snapseed. That selective blur makes a busy street look like a model!