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Removing The Mystery From The Heart Shaped Bokeh Thing
One of the most popular posts here at DIYP is the Create Your Own Bokeh post - this is the one that teaches you how to make nice shapes in the blurred area of your image - AKA Bokeh.
It is a nice thing because, usually, those hotspots are just taking away from your subject attention, and if you apply this technique, those annoying hotspots can become part of your artistic say.
Creating your own bokeh shapes is easy and fun, however there are a few repeating questions that I frequently get by email and comments. This is why I was really happy to learn that manimal magic has done some great thinking and have solutions for all questions. Some of manimal magic's wisdom was found in the comments of the original post, and some was taken (along with the images for this article) from his (really awesome) Flickr stream. I am going to format this as a Q&A thing, cuz it really feels like he's answered all the hard questions.
How Small Should I Make The Shaped Hole?
Well, that really depends on the aperture your lens have and on the focal length you are shooting with. The calculations below are based on the assumption that the black card is placed directly on the outer glass. In real life there is a bit more distance created by a filter, so the size needs to be a bit smaller
Because we are creating a new aperture, it must be smaller than the one inside our lens. This of course is how a lens works - it is one big aperture with a
smaller one inside. All we have done is supplement the old aperture :)
If we take a "large" aperture, say a value of f/2 - this just expresses
the ratio of the focal length to the diameter of the aperture.
In a prime lens of 50mm with an aperture setting of f/2 the aperture
will be 25mm, so your cutout shape must be less than 25mm in diameter
to get the effect.
A prime lens of 100mm at f/2 will have an aperture diameter of 50mm,
which is why they are so big and heavy and expensive, and your pre-cut
shape can be up to 5cm in diameter.
How do you know how big of a hole to make and what settings to use on any lens?
The shape you make must be smaller than the aperture in your lens.
Take the focal length that you wish to use (e.g. 100mm)
Divide this by the aperture value that is smallest on your lens (e.g. f/2)
In this case the diameter of the lens aperture is 50mm.
If you make your shape smaller than 50mm across the effect should work as shown above.
50mm f/2 - shape must be less than 25mm across
75mm f/2 - must be under 37.5mm across
100mm f/2 - must be under 50mm
50mm f/2.8 - must be under 17.5mm
50mm f/3.5 - must be under 14.2mm
Can I use this cool trick with my point and shoot?
Well, that depends on how small you can make your punctured hole. The focal length of a regular point and shoot is about 7 millimeters on the wide side and about 12 millimeters on the zoom side. (I'm talking real focal length and not crop factor equivalent).
That means that your hole will have to be about 2.5 millimeters at 2.8 wide. Not that trivial, but possible.
How do I make the hole in the dead center of the lens?
One of the key points to utilizing the entire "new" aperture is to place it on the dead center of the black card or cap of the lens. It's real easy if you make two lines to form an "X" on the card board. See the picture to the left.
Once you have the cross to mark the center, simply place your hole on the middle of the "x". As my good friend Indy use to say "X marks the spot".
If you like this art, you can find a great collection of images on the DIYP Flickr group.
Related Links:
- Shaped Bokeh on Flickr
Great Bokeh Lenses:
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Comments
Ok, i was able to build my
Ok, i was able to build my own bokeh...i made it on a triangular shape.
My only doubt is how should i place the lights to achieve the kind of effect that you got on those photos...i've only been able to make it with street lights set far far away from me.
Bokeh and Distance
Hi Rafael,
To make the Bokeh magic you need to make sure that the bright spots of light are A - bright and B - off focus.
Street lamps is indeed one way of doing it. If you'll look at the pool, you'll see that most bokeh pictures are made with a really (really) close object and some relatively distant lights - street lamps, candles, stars...
new! a dedicated flickr group for it:
Shaped Bokeh
http://www.flickr.com/groups/shaped_bokeh/
WOW Fabio
Looks like you are on with a great start. I added the group into the article.
Cool group!
In the photo above the doll is at the lenses minimum focus distance (about a foot away for this lens) and the lights about 3 feet away.
In the question mark photo the lights are just taped to some black card about one foot behind the model.
Great post!
This is a very interesting technique. I have not seen this before.
I managed to get the effect
I managed to get the effect without the black card by misfocusing on some street lamps and zooming in a lot.
I guess I'd like to know what I'm supposed to see in the viewfinder to get the effect? Black screen with small hole or black screen with large hole? Because, so far nothing has worked with the black card and the shape...
re. black card
If you look through the viewfinder and you see the black card with a hole in it, the effect has not worked.
Look at the photos above - they look like regular pictures, there is no hole in the middle.
These photos have not been cropped - when your hole is the right size you will see a picture like the one above, and you will not see the black card.
Let's take your example.
Point the camera at the lights and defocus so that you see the lights turn from points of light into circles of confusion.
Check the aperture in your camera. This should be as big as possible, and this means the number should be as small as possible, eg. f/2 or f/3.5, but not f/8 or f/14.
If you do this, then simply adding the black card with a small enough hole in it will get you a picture like the one above.
Here is an example of what you see at the moment.
This is not good - either the hole was made too large, or the aperture inside the lens is too small.
The shape you put in front MUST BE SMALLER than your aperture.
If this STILL does not work, please post here what type of lens you have. If you include what focal length it is, eg. 100mm or 70mm, and post it's biggest aperture size, eg. f/2 or f/3.5, then we can calculate for you what size of hole you must use to get the effect above.
Great tips
Thanks for helping to clear this out. The idea about defocusing first is great.
It still doesn't seem to
It still doesn't seem to work. Sigh...
I have an 18 - 200mm, f/3.5 - 6.3 lens.
hmmm
Well, I am guessing your lens only does like f/5.6 as you zoom out a bit.
We want to keep the aperture large, and we want to be able to create some background blur.
If we tried 18mm, even at f/3.5 this makes an aperture diameter of around 5mm - your hole would need to be smaller, and that's pretty small.
So lets try something larger - 70mm and f/5.6. Remember that f/5.6 just means focal length (f) divided by 5.6, so this time the aperture is 12.5mm across, and your shape can be one cm or so.
Try this - make sure the black card completely covers your lens and male sure the hole is in the middle.
Put the camera on aperture priority mode.
Set the aperture to f/5.6.
Set the lens to between 70mm and 100mm.
The shape you cut out must be smaller than 1cm across, try no bigger than 8mm.
If you do this you will see the effect - if not keep zooming.
There must be something in the background to blur also, like streetlights in the distance.
I hope this works :D
re:hmmm
I'm using a DX (1.5 crop factor) Nikon Lens.
18-200mm
3.5-5.6
It is impossible for me to make a cutout within the parameters of the aperture (say 35mm at a focal length of 200mm) and still have the cardboard not show up through the viewfinder. It seems that the only way to get ride of the cardboard from the viewfinder is to make the cutout larger than the maximum diameter.
Any thoughts? Thanks...
Great fun
I gave it a go with my totally inappropriate 70-300mm f4 lens and managed to get it working. Nice trick. More details here.
Works better now! I got the
Works better now! I got the circles of light to look like my shape and there isn't the shape in the viewfinder. Now I just need to try and get it to fit the whole frame.
Thanks for your help!
I've tried a few times, used
I've tried a few times, used f2.8, and the shape is less than 5mm, but I still can't do it :(
I have an 17-50mm f2.8 -22 lens
thanks!
17-50
I'm not sure if your lens does f/2.8 throughout the zoom range, so I will work it out for something that you will be able to access with any lens, like f/5.6.
f/5.6 is just the focal length divided by that number, so for 17mm it is 17/5.6, around 3mm - way too small.
But f/5.6 at 50mm is 50/5.6, around 8 or 9mm across.
So if you set your lens to f/5.6 (or lower, go f/2.8 if you can) and also to 50mm, your shapes should work.
If you set your lens to 17mm and f/2.8 for example, 17/2.8 is close to the 5mm your shapes are now, and this might be why it doesn't work.
If you zoom in to 50mm and it STILL doesn't work, try a slightly smaller hole, but hopefully your current 5mm hole will work at f/5.6 or less at 50mm.
;]
Camera Aperture
Hi I have used this technique in the early 80s and shot a calendar using a middle format camera Mamiya RB67 Pro with 127 mm lens.
I would like add that we donot use the camera aperture and we keep the camera aperture at its maximum opening.
We are adding an external aperture by way of a shape in black card board/plastic/metalic sheet in front of the lens as a filter.
The size of the shape being cut in the center as shown in the diagram should be like F11 plus.
The bigger the distance between the subject and background that have specular / hotspots.
focusing
what a great idea u have. How about the focusing?...which one is the best, manual focus or automatic focus? please tell me more about the focusing technique to get a great picture with custom bokeh.
focusing
Well, most of your shapes will have a definite shape and orientation to them.
You want your hearts with the pointy bit down, that kinda thing :P
It's easiest to adjust the focus manually, and when you get it right then adjust your shape to make it the way you want it.
In fact, if you can focus and then add the card afterwards it is probably even better - but either way, autofocus could end up messing your shot in this case by moving your shapes when you don't want it.
Go manual >:-]
point and shoot
hi, i have a samsung s850 and tried what you said about using a point and shoot by making a really small heart shape in card ( it was literally 2.5mm wide!). i managed to get a vague heart shaped bokeh but it was really blurry and the cutout heart shape was visible in the viewfinder. and by visible i mean most of the photo was black, with a small circle in the middle where the cutout was and then one vaguely heart shaped circle of bokeh-y light in it...
i'm probably being realy stupid with these but please help!!
thank you :D
xx
bokeh and focal length
I am trying to do this with my Fujifilm S5200 bridge camera. The camera has a 10X optical zoom lens. I did an initial attempt at this and found that the hole was WAY to small. When I looked at the photos in Photoshop elements and looked at the focal length on the EXIF data I was showing anything from 6.3mm to 38mm depending on how I zoomed it. I was shooting at F 3.2 to F3.5 depending on the focal length. I was surprised to see such numbers on the EXIF data. According to your calculations I would need like a 10mm hole in the filter, but then I would be looking at almost nothing and most of what I saw in the viewfinder would be black paper. Should I be calculating on the focal length with the crop factor figured in?
point and shoot
with a point and shoot, you will want to be zoomed as far in as possible. The longer your zoom, the less of the diameter of the lens you are using- that will help get rid of the "i am seeing a big black card with a hole cut in the middle" feeling.
Long focal lengths (i.e. zoom) will also be the only way to achieve a shallow enough depth-of-field with a point-and-shoot to get decent bokeh, so try making sure you are as zoomed in as possible (without going to digital zoom, all that does is crop the image), and set your camera to aperture priority and set it as "low" as it goes (i.e. f/2 or f/4), and see what you come up with.
best of luck. i'm about to try this with my video camera.
Shaped Bokeh
I also took this idea and made a video tutorial from it - I've posted it on my wedding photography blog here:
http://www.michaelwarf.com/blog/shaped-bokeh-photography-tutorial
The size to focal length / aperture ratio was the challenge for me.
can you do this effect with a canon rebel?
using a manual setting, can you use this trick with a canon rebel dslr? I am fairly new to my camera and would love to figure this out. Any advice?
what size?
i have an olympus evolt e 410 1 lens is 14-42mm with f3.5-5.6 and another lens 40-150mm with f4.0-5.6
what size and such should i use to create an effective bokeh?
Create Your Own Bokeh
I have a Canon EF 50mm F8 fixed lens. My question is how big is my cut out shape let say heart???
How do I take portrait photo with this DIY Bokeh adapter, do I look thru the cut out hold focus and taking a picture???
Please help . Thanks.
I mean Canon Ef 50mm F1.8
I mean Canon Ef 50mm F1.8 fixed lens.
re: Canon 50/1.8
Hi Chinh Le ,
The 50mm/F1.8 is actually one of the more popular lenses for this project. math is simple: 50mm/1.8 = 27.77 = to be on the safe side, Id make sure the the biggest diagonal is no bigger then 2.7cm.
This assuming you are are indeed setting the aperture to f/1.8 when you take the picture.
Help...
I'm using AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR (5.8x) lens...
I'm not sure if I'm doing the calculations right...
Should I be using 18mm divided by f/3.5? or 105mm divided by f/5.6?
I tried dividing 105mm by f/5.6 which gave me about 18mm...
I cut out a shape around 1.7mm (just to be one the safe side)...
Managed to get the shaped bokeh...
But only a small portion of the background can be seen, the rest is all blocked out by the cardboard...
Can someone please help point out what I'm doing wrong?
I look forward to a reply...
Thanks...
You should be zoomed in so
You should be zoomed in so that none of the cardboard is showing.
Make sure that you get the aperature calculation when the camera lens is zoomed in all the way. And I believe you will divide 105mm by the biggest aperature.
a few examples
thanks so much for the
thanks so much for the tutorial + tips! i was able to achieve the effect using my point-and-shoot digital camera (an Olympus SP-565UZ).
please visit my blog here
how do i make the bokeh sharper?
like in the airplanes photo, one airplane is more sharp, how do I make it?
Thanks
I have a Nikon 18-55 lens
I have a Nikon 18-55 lens with max aperture of 5.6 i've made the hole about 3mm across (just a triangle) as i thought starting off small would be easier than having to remake it :) but i can't get it to work. i've read through the comments and it seems that going to 55mm would work best, but no matter what i try i can still see the black card through the viewfinder.
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