ragnelle 's List: Photography

• DIY - Create Your Own Bokeh
• You will need :
• One sheet of black paperboard
• One large aperture lens
• Cut and shape the sheet to make a fake lens hood. The Diameter is made so that it snugly fits on the lens
• In the middle of the filter the wanted bokeh shape is cut out
• I’m not sure how big a hole the shape can be. But you can check it right away by just looking through the viewfinder.
• 50mm lens @ F1.8 a 15mm heart gives a metering value equal to F3.2, so it can probably be a little bigge
• Set your camera to its lowest aperture value (completely open).
• 

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• The truth is you can shoot bokeh with a pocket or “push here dummy” (PhD) camera, but there are a few things you need to understand about the way they work first so you can set the camera up and compose your shot properly
• first rule of bokeh is the bigger and rounder the aperture opening, the bigger and rounder the bokeh.
• to get good bokeh you need:
• second challenge to overcome is the PhD camera’s fully-automatic-do-everything-for-you mindset
• out of focus pin point light sources in the background
• argest possible aperture setting

  • Opposite of DSLR?
• medium to long focal length (zoom in)
• short focal distance to the foreground subject
• significant distance between the foreground subject and background points of light
• By forcing the camera to use a relatively slow ISO speed we ensure that the PhD’s brain will dial up the largest aperture opening to try and compensate for the lack of light while keeping the shutter speed as fast as possible.
• Image stabilization will help compensate for camera shake in what is bound to be a rather slow exposure.
• Macro focus mode will enable us to dial in a very short focal distance to maximize depth of field
• Focus on something small up as close to the front of the camera lens as possible (half press and HOLD of the shutter button only-do not take the picture yet).
• Since PhD cameras lock exposure and focus at the same time, the trick here is to pre-focus on something very small in the foreground while not blocking too much light from the background and ruining the exposure of the bokeh.
• Adding a subject back into the foreground after pre-focusing on the small foreground object (using the LCD viewfinder to achieve focus by manually moving the camera and/or subject in front of the lens while continuing to hold the shutter button at the halfway point) can make for some pretty interesting bokeh shots

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• In photography, bokeh^{[pronunciation?]} is the blur,^[1][2] or the aesthetic quality of the blur,^[3][4][5] in out-of-focus areas of an image, or "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light.
• term comes from the Japanese word boke (暈け or ボケ), which means "blur" or "haze", or boke-aji (ボケ味), the "blur quality".
• Good bokeh is especially important for large-aperture lenses, macro lenses, and long telephoto lenses because they are typically used with a shallow depth of field
• In out-of-focus areas, each point of light becomes an image of the aperture, generally a more or less round disc
• Bokeh characteristics may be quantified by examining the image's circle of confusion

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• For the purposes of this how-to we’ll focus (pun intended) on out of focus highlight bokeh.
• For the purposes of this how-to we’ll focus (pun intended) on out of focus highlight bokeh
• The secret to shooting bokeh lies in its definition: out of focus highlights
• three things to shoot bokeh: pin point highlights, a large aperture and a short focal distance.
• When I say pin point highlights I mean small light sources
• I find street and car lights in the distance at night make wonderful bokeh.
• Fast lenses below f/2.8
• Typically the larger the aperture the larger the bokeh.
• are ideal for shooting bokeh
• trick is to make sure you are using the largest aperture possible (smallest f number).
• recommend switching your camera into Aperture Priority mode
• other reason that you want the largest possible aperture your lens is capable of is to ensure that your bokeh is round and not faceted
• There are exceptions to this rule as most high end lenses use curved aperture blades that keep the aperture opening round at all f stops.
• The last component to getting good bokeh shots is the focus distance used.
• shorter the focus distance to the foreground subject, the better the background bokeh I will get.
• The idea is to get as much distance between the subject and the bokeh producing highlights
• Also, the closer you are focused to the camera the shorter the depth of field (DOF) will be.
• ensures those lights way off in the background will be nice and blurred out.
• Depth of field is basically a function of focal length, distance to subject and aperture. At a given aperture and distance longer focal lengths result in shorter DOF
• A short DOF is what we need to effectively blur the background highlights to produce bokeh
• Getting close to the foreground subject and zooming to the longest setting on your lens will likely put you where you need to be to capture killer bokeh

  • Try this
• If you get a shutter speed that’s too slow (ie: less than 1/30 second), try bumping the ISO up to 400 or more
• Depending on how dark the background is (darker usually = better) you might have to dial in some exposure compensation to get your bokeh to really pop.
• often have to dial in +2/3 to +1 EV

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