Custom Bokeh | Friday Find

If you’re stuck in a photographic rut or fancy trying something new, try creating your very own custom bokeh effect! All kudos goes to DIYphotography.net, we stumbled across their ‘Create your own Bokeh’ post and thought everyone should give custom bokeh a try!

Custom bokeh by Only Alice ©

What is bokeh?

Bokeh (derived from Japanese) is a photographic term referring to the aesthetic quality of point-of-light sources in an out-of-focus area of an image produced by a camera lens using a shallow depth of field.

Essentially, bokeh is a qualitative measure of light distortion in the out-of-focus areas of an image, and is primarily caused by lens aberrations and aperture shape. - Wikipedia entry on bokeh

Different lenses have distinct bokeh characteristics – some are more aesthetically pleasing than others. One factor to keep an eye on if you’re looking for a lens with good bokeh is the number of aperture blades.

Lenses with a greater number of aperture blades tend to have a more rounded diaphragm, which in turn produces rounded out of focus highlights, for smoother backgrounds. For example the older Nikon 50mm f1.4 D lens has 7 aperture blades, whereas the new Nikon 50mm f1.4 G lens has 9 aperture blades.

Creating your own bokeh

© DIYphotography.net

The first step to creating your own bokeh is finding a suitable lens; a prime with a large aperture works best (f1.2, f1.4 or f1.8).

Hopefully you have a 50mm f1.8 lens already sitting in your kit bag – if not don’t miss out; “nifty fifties” are extremely affordable and great for improving your photography!

• Canon EF 50mm f1.8 II Lens
• Nikon 50mm f1.8 D AF Lens
• Sony 50mm f1.8 DT SAM Lens

Step two is covering the front of your lens with a sheet of black paper, then cutting a small shape in the centre of your sheet – this will effectively create a ‘second aperture’ which will shape your bokeh.

With and without custom bokeh

Pure Genius

This DIY custom bokeh feat can leave you taping sheets of black paper to your lens, which isn’t ideal. A super neat solution posted by a DIYphotography.net reader is to use a Cokin filter holder. You’ll need an adapter ring to attach the filter holder to your lens, and then you’re away!

Clever creative bokeh setup by thisisnoblog on Flickr ©

Did you know?

A couple of brands have cottoned onto adapting bokeh; LensBaby have a creative aperture kit and Nikon have the Nikkor 105mm f2 DC & 135mm f2 DC lenses with defocus-image control.

Custom Bokeh Images

Take a look at this fantastic custom bokeh image, called “Capturing a Heart” by Zoso on FlickR:

Capturing a Heart by Zoso © on FlickR

There are more great examples exploring FlickR’s custom bokeh tag, but we’d really like to see your results – link to them in the comments!