Bokeh – How To

We get asked quite a lot about what is to many a mysterious word….’Bokeh’. In this post we’ll explain the myth and explain how you can use bokeh to create some great effects.

What Is Bokeh?

Bokeh is a term used to describe the parts of the photograph that is out of focus. You can think of bokeh as the opposite to the part of the photograph that is in focus ( or sharp). As with sharpness, the use of different lenses, with different apertures in different light conditions will produce very different bokehs.

image by Lee Ann L

In recent years photographers have been paying much more attention to bokeh, how it changes and how they can manipulate it to improve their photographs.

How to Use Bokeh Effectively

One thing we as photographers know is that by using a shallow depth of field we can maintain the viewers attention purely on our subject, blurring out any distractions.  However the blurred part of the photo can be equally important for telling the photographs story. The type or amount of bokeh produced can greatly affect how we see and intemperate the background in our photographs.

Change Aperture

Perhaps the easiest way to control and change bokeh is to adjust your cameras aperture. The easiest way is to use your cameras aperture control (AV) mode. Selecting a large aperture (a smaller f-stop) means you’ll use a smaller depth of field which will increase the bokeh in the shot.

Another way to increase the bokeh in your shot is to get your subject closer to the camera. Doing so will reduce the depth of field and therefore increase the bokeh effect.

I used both of the above techniques for this shot of a puma above. Firstly I used an aperture of f6.3 to throw the background out of focus. In addition this was shot in a wildlife sanctuary (not in the wild!) so I was only a few feet away from the puma. Additionally I was using a 70-200mm lens, zoomed to 200m which helped to narrow the depth of field even further.

Another bonus in the above shot was that I managed to get some bokeh in for foreground too, on the pumas body on the left side of the frame. This helps even more to keep the viewers attention directly on the the pumas face.

Let The Bokeh Tell The Story

In the photograph below the bokeh had to be carefully controlled so that the emphasis was on the sign in the foreground while the bokeh allowed us to still make out the stressed pose of the woman in the background. Together the two elements tell the story of this photograph.

The point is you don’t need to know what the woman looks like or who she is. To make the picture work all you need to know is that she is stressed out! If the bokeh had been too much and the woman’s pose unviewable the photo would not have worked.

Using Light Bokeh

When shooting at night you can get some great effects by playing around with the bokeh produced by background lights. Any lights in the background can be used however it helps if they are either small or far away. Christmas tree fairy lights, traffic lights, car head lamps, anything can be used to get some pretty good effects.

In the shot below I wanted to take a shot of the little plastic film camera I’d just bought myself as an early Christmas present. Having set up a rather boring shot on my kitchen table I decided to make it more interesting by switching on the Christmas tree light in the far end of the room.

In order to get the nice effect I had to use my cameras manual mode to ensure the depth of field was correct. Next I switched to manual focus mode and played around until the amount of bokeh on the lights was what i wanted.

Finally once the camera was set I had to move forward or backward slightly to make sure the camera on the table was in the part of the picture most in focus.

Be careful if shooting in low light or at night time as you may run into problems such as low shutter speeds. If you do you can try and increase your ISO or switch to using a tripod (so long as you are shooting a static subject) as I did for the above shot.

Change The Bokeh Shape

If shooting at night time you can dramatically change the shape of the [usually round] bokeh produced by your camera. A great example is the heart shaped bokeh at the start of this article. To get this effect all you need to do is to cut the desired shape into a piece of black card (make the hole about 1-2 cm in size) then simply tape this over the front of your lens.

Do you have any bokeh tips? If so please share them using the comments below.

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Tagged as: bokeh, Focus