Bokehis an adaptation from a a Japanese word meaning blur. In photographythis term is used to describe the quality of the areas in the picturewhich are not in focus.When referring to Bokeh, we can distinguish some of it characteristics:
- Is the light/dark gradient smooth or sharp?
- What shape will a small dot of light take what it is in the Bokeh area? (mirror lenses for example, create a bagel like Bokeh)
We can play with those two variants to create a special Bokeh.
You will need :
1. Cut and shape the sheet to make a fake lens hood. The Diameter is made so that it snugly fits on the lens.
2. In the middle of the filter the wanted bokeh shape is cut out - inout example a heart is used. I’m not sure how big a hole the shape canbe. But you can check it right away by just looking through theviewfinder. On the 50mm lens @ F1.8 a 15mm heart gives a metering valueequal to F3.2, so it can probably be a little bigger (you can use a puncher or cut it by hand).
3. Set your camera to its lowest aperture value (completely open).
Here are two shots to demonstrate this technique - one with a bare lens and the other with the hearted hood. see more shots here and here (I leave it as an exercise to tell which is which :)
Here are the parameters for the example shown above: