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.

Shaped Bokeh
http://www.flickr.com/groups/shaped_bokeh/

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.

This is a very interesting technique. I have not seen this before.

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...

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.

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 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 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!

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.

;]

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.

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.

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 >:-]

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

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?

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.

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.

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?

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?

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 fixed lens.

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...

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

like in the airplanes photo, one airplane is more sharp, how do I make it?

Thanks

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.

This works great but I went and bought another lens cap and did a proper job. I can see it being something I use a lot for weddings! www.brightonphotographic.co.uk

I just pickedup a Canon 1000D with EFS 18-55 lens..
this is my first SLR camera so bit new to few terms but i am too excited to learn and experiment things like this..

So can i use my lens EFS 18-55 ?

I have a Pentax k-m with an 18-55 lens.. I've tried different hole sizes and i still can't get this to work. This is a really cool effect and I'd love to use it some day but I can't get it to work at all!

I've been experimenting with this for a few days now and while I'm achieving the shaped bokeh effects as desired, I'm not able to overcome the vignetting. Here's my situation:

I'm shooting with a Canon 20D (1.6X crop factor) and 5D MK II (full frame). It should be easier to avoid the vignette on the 20D due to the fact that I've got less frame to deal with than on the 5D MK II, but I'm still having limited luck. The primary lens I've been experimenting with is a 24 - 105mm f/4 L. It maintains f/4 as the widest aperture throughout it's 24 - 105mm focal range.

So, theoretically, if I want to use the effect at 24mm on my 20D, my real aperture is 6mm. If I want to do it at 50mm the aperture is 12.5mm and at 105mm the aperture is 26.25mm. I tried using a shape of 10mm size at 50mm, and a shape of 25mm at 105mm, and both gave me vignettes. In fact, using the 25mm shape, I have to put on a larger lens (35 - 350mm f/3.5 - 5.6 L) and rack it out to about 250mm (equivalent of 400mm on my 20D), and only then can I avoid the vignette. It doesn't make sense to me, since people are shooting with 50mm or 100mm primes that I shouldn't be able to shoot at any chosen focal length providing my shape "aperture" is slightly smaller than the camera's widest aperture for it's set focal length.

For the shapes themselves, I've cut square shapes out of very thin yet rigid plastic that match the Cokin P series filter size. It doesn't matter if I place them in the outer most slot on the filter holder (about 10mm away from the lens) or directly against the front of the tens. I still get a vignette of varying degree, depending on the size of the shape I'm using. It seems if I use a shape that doesn't vignette, it's also too large to be the effective aperture, and the specular highlights retain a round shape.  And I can forget about shooting wide angle (24mm in this case) because the vignetting is so severe that I basically have a fraction of the center of the frame exposing. 90% of the photo is black.

Am I calculating the aperture size incorrectly on the zoom lens? Should I be using a different formula than I would on a prime lens; as in should I be measuring the equivalent focal length of the lens from it's rear nodal point or something? I'm kind of out of ideas at this point. I've tried so many sized shapes at so many focal lengths that I feel as though I should be getting in the ballpark simply by random chance.

I have read a number of responses that state "you need to zoom in" to avoid the vignette, but this shouldn't be necessary. On a prime lens zooming is impossible, and if the shape is smaller than the camera's aperture, theoretically, it should work.

If anybody can provide me with some suggestions or advice as to what I'm overlooking, I'd appreciate it. You may also feel free to email me at jlsgraphicdesign@gmail.com

Thanks in advance.

I love this effect! I want to try it, but I fear that my camera would not work for it. Can I use my Canon G-11? It is not quite a D-SLR, but it definitely a step above a point-and-shoot...

Well.
I have the Canon 20D with a 24-85mm lens and it's just not working. I've been trying for about 3 hours now, i really want to get this effect!

If anyone has ANY tips, it would be appreciated
Thanks (;