Sunday, January 3, 2010

Introduction to Bokeh

During my architecture-turned-nature shoot on New Years' Eve, I got this nice macro of a little cluster of red berries hanging from a tree. Obviously you can see that in post-processing, I partially desaturated it.



click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr
Aperture: f/2.6
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 80
Handheld



But what I noticed a little later was that the background has some absolutely awesome bokeh. Bokeh, for anyone who doesn't know, is pinpoints of light that are out of focus. They become these nice orbs. Bokeh textures are often added to other photos.

I read in this post on Nasyarobby's photoblog that it's possible to shape your bokeh. I'll definitely be experiementing with this technique.

In the meantime, feel free to share any great bokeh pictures in the comments. That would be photos that have bokeh occurring in them, or photos that you used a bokeh texture on.

4 comments:

  1. Ooh, I like how you desaturated this. Feels so cool and wintry. Very nice. And yes, that's some lovely bokeh. I haven't tried shaped bokeh yet, but I plan to. Eventually.

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  2. I am a bokeh junkie :) I am addicted to it even more so now because of that new 50 1.4 lens. I like the desaturated colors here - nice and sharp on the berries - and of course the bokeh. I prepared a bokeh photo for you to see:

    http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2533/4242784915_8e1cfc3717.jpg

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  3. Oh, the photo title didn't show up when linked, but FYI, I call it Chewbokeh... :)

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  4. I'm a bokeh newbie. Anyway, here's a link to my attempt.

    http://samanthawhite.smugmug.com/Children/Brooke/10854302_GwuJg#757219578_h9r9F

    ReplyDelete

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