من فريد ظفور
How to Create a Unique Bokeh Effect in Photography
Bokeh is a pleasing blur in a photo’s background, affected by aperture, focal length, and subject distance. The quality of this blur depends on the lens design, aperture shape, and lens elements. To enhance it, use a wide aperture and focus on a nearby subject, or opt for a lens that produces pleasing bokeh.
Bokeh photography is one of the charms of the art of photography. How the sharp image pops up from the blurry background makes a stylish technique that can produce appealing, professional-looking images. An excellent picture that you can be proud of to show to your family and friends.
Sure, many smartphones with dual lenses now have a field blur tool that can take nice bokeh, but if used to take photos with your camera, whether a DSLR or a mirrorless camera, you can see the difference with your bare eyes.
I will share my experience to help you explore and capture artistic and better bokeh, so you will know what kind of bokeh suits your style and how to capture it. So, let’s get started with the basics.
يعتبر تصوير البوكيه أحد سحر فن التصوير الفوتوغرافي. إن الطريقة التي تنبثق بها الصورة الحادة من الخلفية الباهتة تشكل تقنية أنيقة يمكنها إنتاج صور جذابة ذات مظهر احترافي. صورة ممتازة يمكنك أن تفخر بعرضها لعائلتك وأصدقائك.
بالتأكيد، تحتوي العديد من الهواتف الذكية ذات العدسات المزدوجة الآن على أداة طمس المجال يمكنها التقاط تأثير بوكيه جميل، ولكن إذا تم استخدامها لالتقاط صور بالكاميرا، سواء كانت كاميرا dslr أو كاميرا بدون مرآة، فيمكنك رؤية الفرق بأعينك المجردة.
سأشارك تجربتي لمساعدتك في استكشاف البوكيه الفني والأفضل والتقاطه، حتى تعرف نوع البوكيه الذي يناسب أسلوبك وكيفية التقاطه. لذلك، دعونا نبدأ بالأساسيات.
Understanding Bokeh Photography
To learn bokeh photography, you need to understand the depth of field, which refers to the range in space that’s in acceptable focus. It’s a number, a measurement.
What Makes a Pleasing Bokeh
To create a pleasing bokeh, the out-of-focus background blur should be soft and creamy, with smooth circles of light, without any hard edges, and beautiful transitions between the blurry areas.
So, when you see sharp edges bokeh with rough transitions between the blurry areas, you want to avoid that bad bokeh because its blurry quality is hard on the eye.
Telephoto Lens
Another thing to consider is using a telephoto lens. As your focal length increases, bokeh becomes more pronounced due to perspective compression intensifying the blurring effect. But the longer it is, the longer its Minimum Focusing Distance (MFD). MFD is the shortest distance from the focusing plane to the subject at which it can be sharply rendered, i.e., “in focus.” So, the longer your lens’s focal length, the more extended space you need between your camera and your subject.
A telephoto lens ranges from “medium” (ranges between 70 and 200mm) up to “super telephoto” (with a range longer than 300mm). Telephoto lens for portrait photography usually comes in the form of fixed lens (75mm, 85mm, 90mm, or 105mm). A standard telephoto lens that is longer than 100mm is usually a zoom lens and comes at a lower price than a fixed lens.
Using this lens can be tricky. A longer focal length requires a faster shutter speed, which is adjusted accordingly with your aperture settings so you won’t have a camera shake. If you’re in a low light condition, try using a tripod to have a steady shot.
Vintage Lens
You can try using a vintage lens if you’re on a budget. Three countries produced them in the day: Japan, Germany, and Russia.
Some of those lenses are stellar and come with a high price tag back then. But now you can buy them at relatively cheap. The most common is the nifty-fifty lens. You can get a 50mm f/1.4 lens for under $100 depending on its condition and brand.
The advantage of using an old-school lens is that they have characteristics that make a great bokeh that I can’t get from another modern lens, providing an old-world atmosphere that creates nostalgia. Its strength lies in its unique bokeh; therefore, choosing a supporting background light source is necessary.
The downside is they are all manual lenses. So, it takes a lot of practice to nail the proper focus.
Kit Lens
You must remember that every lens can blur the background to a degree.
A standard zoom kit lens typically has an f-stop number of f/2.8-4.0. The f-stop number increases along with your focal length. So, for example, if you have a zoom kit lens 18-55mm f/2.8-4.0, when you use it at 18mm, the largest aperture will be f/2.8, and when you increase your FL to 55mm, the largest aperture will change to f/4.0.
That being said, with that small aperture size, can you make a bokeh out of it? The answer is yes, with some adjustments.
The most crucial factor in creating bokeh is the distance between the camera and the subject and between the subject and the background.
When focusing closer to the camera, the depth of field becomes shallower, resulting in more noticeable bokeh. However, if your subject is very close to the background, there may not be sufficient separation to form distinct bokeh circles.
So, to have maximum bokeh with your lens kit, focus as close as possible to your subject, use a wide aperture, and try to find a long or vast background behind it to create a more pronounced bokeh. Having a bokeh background with many trees and how much light at golden hours helps.
But remember that you won’t get ‘Christmas lights’ kind of bokeh with the lens I’ve mentioned above.
Sensor Size
There’s been a lot of debate on this matter among photographers. Physically, sensor size has nothing to do with the amount of blur. But, in practice, it does.
Imagine using the same lens on two cameras, one with a bigger sensor and another with a smaller sensor. The smaller sensor camera makes you stand farther from the subject to get the same shot.
The subject’s distance affects bokeh; the closer you are to your subject, the more blurry and pleasing the background looks (bokeh). In this case, the smaller sensor camera will result in a less blurry background (less bokeh) because you have to stand farther away from your subject.
Of course, the two cameras’ size, weight, and price differ significantly. The full-frame camera is heavier, bigger, and more expensive than the APS-C camera. But for those unfamiliar with photography, I don’t think they can tell the difference when they see the result.
Aperture Blades and Shape
The shape, number, curvature, and movement of the blades directly influence the shape and quality of the bokeh. A round and smooth bokeh is often considered aesthetically pleasing, and lenses with more circular or well-designed polygonal apertures can achieve this effect.
This effect happens because the shape of the wide apertures is a perfect circle when it’s wide open, meaning the shape of your bokeh will be circular, too. But once you increase your f-stop slightly, the differences in iris design become apparent.
Soap bubble bokeh, a characteristic of vintage lenses, is caused by their aperture blades forming a polygonal shape, unlike the rounded diaphragm blades in modern lenses.
The polygonal shape of the aperture leads to a distinctive bokeh pattern in the out-of-focus areas that resemble soap bubbles as background lights.
As tempting as using bokeh-filled photos for everything, it doesn’t guarantee your photos’ uniqueness like any technique. Not every subject lends itself well to a bokeh background.
For instance, if you’re photographing a broad scene or landscape, a shallow depth of field won’t work. However, bokeh photography can be a good choice if you focus on a single subject, like portrait, pet, macro, or still-life photography.
While this may seem complicated initially, capturing it is remarkably easy once you get the hang of it. As you experiment with bokeh, you’ll discover plenty of options and arrangements to play around with.
As with many photography techniques, the key to success is experimenting with your equipment and seeing what works best.
مصور محترف حائز على العديد من الجوائز العالمية و المحلية في مجال التصوير الفوتوغرافي.
