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But others will just make your head spin. Despite the fact that such lenses often don’t come with even the most basic controls, such as an aperture ring.Īdmittedly, in some cases, the results can look pretty good.
#Bokeh lens professional
And so you’ll find that most professional photographers actually don’t worry all that much about things like bokeh – just as long as the lens doesn’t produce overly-busy and distracting backgrounds.īut in their search for the ultimate swirly bokeh lens, some obsessives go as far as to use old projector lenses or the lenses from cheap CCTV cameras. More important is the foreground your subject. Indeed, a nice smooth background will look nice, but good photography is about much more than optical effects. In this case, you have more important problems to worry about than bokeh. But to be brutally honest, if viewers of your photos are so busy looking at out of focus areas, that’s probably a sign that there is something wrong with the in-focus areas. To be sure, given the choice between two otherwise identical lenses, it would definitely make sense to choose the one that produces the best bokeh. In recent years bokeh has become something of an online obsession with endless forum threads, Flickr discussions, and blog posts dedicated to recommending the best swirly bokeh lenses. Photo by Balázs Benjaminfrom Pexels Do You Need a Bokeh Lens? Distance from camera to background also influences the effect, so you’ll need to experiment a little in order to find the optimum position. Generally, swirly bokeh will only appear when the background contains quite a busy repeated texture or pattern (think thick foliage on trees, or a gravel drive). So don’t expect to see a whirl of trippy bokeh on a plain background such as a sky or white wall. Keep in mind, though, that even the most bokehlicious lens will not produce swirly effects on just any subject. Just bear in mind that older lenses can differ significantly from modern-built lenses, often lacking standard conveniences such as multiple anti-reflective coatings, and “nanotechnology.” However, although vintage optics may not come with the same technological enhancements as their modern equivalents, they frequently offer very beautiful and characteristic out of focus rendering and can inject some real character into photos. In any case, if you’re in the market for one of the more extreme swirly bokeh lenses and don’t have a huge budget to spend, vintage is undoubtedly the way to go.
#Bokeh lens manual
And when you do, the lens is likely to be manual focus only. But as modern lenses tend to be optically advanced and are designed for sharpness, it’s much rarer to come across truly swirly bokeh with a modern lens. I highly Recommend KEH for buying & selling used photography gear.Īlthough often highly sought after in a lens, the “swirly” type of bokeh is really the result of a design defect. Particularly for portraits shot against the foliage. But when a lens hits the right balance, there is no doubt that the swirly bokeh effect can look really nice.
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In some cases though, bokeh can become so pronounced that it dominates the entire photo, or it can end up looking gimmicky. When it works, this effect can add a lot of movement and interest to an image without competing with the subject for the viewer’s attention. On some more extreme bokeh lenses, out of focus rendering can become an almost psychedelic swirl.
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And when bokeh is really nice, the background just seems to melt away behind the subject. Meanwhile, good bokeh lenses will produce a beautiful creamy-soft background. Some will make background details look quite busy and bitty. It is not pronounced bow-key, boker, boka or any of the other ways you may have heard it said.ĭifferent lenses produce different out of focus effects.
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Photo by Renato Abati from Pexels How Do You Say the Word Bokeh?įirst of all, the word bokeh is pronounced boh-kay: bo as in “bone,” but a little shorter keh like the Spanish “que” or the letter K. the following are some photos to illustrate the shape of swirly bokeh. Generally speaking, smooth and swirly bokeh is considered more desirable than a busy and complicated bokeh. In the context of photography, it refers to the way in which out of focus areas of an image are rendered by a lens.Īs you may have noticed, some lenses will blur a background very smoothly, perhaps even producing a swirly effect, while others tend to render out of focus details in a busier way, with harder edges. What Does Bokeh Mean?īokeh comes from the Japanese word “bokeru,” meaning blur or haziness. What is a swirly bokeh lens, and when and how would you use one? Our definitive guide to swirly bokeh answers all.
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