DIY Bokeh

clipped from www.diyphotography.net

Bokeh is an adaptation from a a Japanese word meaning blur. In photography this term is used to describe the quality of the areas in the picture which are not in focus.

When referring to Bokeh, we can distinguish some of it characteristics:

- Is the light/dark gradient smooth or sharp?

- What shape will a small dot of light take what it is in the Bokeh area? (mirror lenses for example, create a bagel like Bokeh)

We can play with those two variant to create a special Bokeh.

You will need :

• One large aperture lens (a Canon 50mm F1.8 is used here)
• One sheet of black paperboard

1. Cut and shape the sheet to make a fake lens hood. The Diameter is made so that it snugly fits on the lens.

2. In the middle of the filter the wanted bokeh shape is cut out - in out example a heart is used. 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. On the 50mm lens @ F1.8 a 15mm heart gives a metering value equal to F3.2, so it can probably be a little bigger.

3. Set your camera to its lowest aperture value (completely open).

Here are two shots to demonstrate this technique - one with a bare lens and the other with the hearted hood: (I leave it as an exercise to tell which is which :)

Here are the parameters for the example shown above:

• Lens - Canon 50mm F1.8
• "Lens hood" Diameter: 70mm (2.75 inch)
• Hole diameter: 15mm (0.6inch)

Here are two more great examples for this technique from RottieLover (note - there only one "real" heart in each picture):

Just remember:

the lights should be out of focus in your photo. You can do this by focusing on something in the foreground so that the lights in the background get blurred nicely with the wide open aperture. You will notice in your viewfinder that the lights take on the shape that you've cut in your DIY hood.