*Photography by Nay of Moonangelnay on Etsy*

What is Bokeh Exactly? Well it is a term that means blurry, derived from the Japanese meaning of the word “Bokeh”, and in photography it is used to describe of the out of focus parts of your photographs. 

When playing around with the aperture of your camera, you may notice that when using a wider aperture around an interesting light setting outside of your depth of field (ie: fairy lights, lamposts, reflections in water/dewdrops) the light fuzzes and can form a dance of circles of light.

This can make wonderful photographs, and if you work with digital manipulations like myself then using “entirely bokeh” images as filters in post production for your photography artwork can add magic to your images!

*Use of Bokeh post production Filter in Photographic Art – Dream Free 5×7 by Nay of Moonangelnay on Etsy*

MAKING A CUSTOM BOKEH LENS The one thing that can be great fun is by creating your own “bokeh lens” cut out into various shapes that’ll turn these little light circles into light shapes instead, without altering your foreground images if precisely executed. 

On my DSLR I like to use my standard 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens for ease (i like to work relatively close with most of my work!), without ANY filter lenses attached to achieve this effect.  With this lens your camera should at least have an aperture of f/5.6 (even though f/3.5 is wider) from my experience to make this work although if you work this out mathematically I’d imagine it’d work with any lens (however there are other restrictions which I’ll cover shortly).

My lens’ aperture isn’t as wide as some can go, only managing f/3.5 if I am totally zoomed out to 18mm yet I can’t achieve this width at 55mm.  So for bokeh to work I DO NOT want to work totally zoomed out as the effect is best achieved with this lens being completely zoomed in at 55mm, an aperture of f/5.6 AND completely out of focus.  This in effect would create a narrow depth of field so any subject close enough to my lens would be in focus, and the background blurred.  To be zoomed all the way out would widen the depth of field which would reduce the blurring in the background that is important for bokeh, which for lenses that require greater distance from the subject on the photographers part (ie:160-300mm) may not matter too much.  If working with a shorter range like i prefer too, you want to maximize the distance to make the bokeh effect visible in the photo (18mm would make the lights seem tiny!)

a reminder of my settings with my 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens

- zoom in to 55mm
- aperture f/5.6 (minimum for 55mm focal length on my lens)
- adjust focus to be completely out of focus
- any other custom camera settings I want to set

So what would I need if making a custom bokeh lens?

*Photography by Nay of Moonangelnay on Etsy*

- black card
- scissors
- a compass
- a craft knife
- a pen
- a ruler

You want to make a circle in the card to fit your camera lens by placing it flat over the inner part of the lens.  If you use your ruler to measure the inner diameter of your lens and measure this from the midpoint on your compass, you should be able to get the right sized circle to fit snuggly in this space.  in the very center of this circle is where you would draw your shape (whatever you’d like to do!).  It needs to be exactly your lenses focal length divided by the aperture which will give what will become your shape’s size in millimeters.

So for mine
55mm over f/5.6
55/5.6= approx 9.8mm

This is the width and height I can go at max for my shape, so from here i would draw it out, and then cut it out with a craft knife, and then cut the circle out with scissors.  This completed circle should then be placed over the lens to fit snuggly, and making sure your camera is ready you are set to get some awesome shaped bokeh images! 

It’ll take a bit of trial and error to get the distance right before you’ll see the lights change shape as if you stand too close to the light source, it won’t look like the lens has worked.  but if you take steps back (keeping your camera settings the same), soon you’ll see the light change shape and that’s when you can start capturing those interesting images!

* Finding your Spark : Product Photography – Motivation and Inspiration