Make 365: Day 8 - Bokeh Filter

If you're any regular to Flickr, you may have noticed that the site has been seized by Bokeh Madness recently. The sudden lust for all things blurry and out of focus was unprecedented, and took many a casual visitor by surprise.

Bokeh? WTF is Bokeh?

Oh, Boke（ぼけ）? Blurry? ..Seriously?

Regardless of the uncharacteristically silent h tacked on at the end, the word has Japanese origins, and refers to a fuzzy, soft quality in things.

It's achieved by framing a nice picture, making sure color and composition are all doing well, and then turning on manual focus, and blurring the crap out of it. Artistically, of course.

I didn't really get it, but then I saw this DIY Photography article that shows you how to shape the blur in your pictures. Okay, that I can appreciate.

Make 365: Day 8 - Bokeh Filter

It took me a bit to understand how it works, but the jist of it is that the blurred out light entering the sensor of your lens is actually shaped by the filter it passes through. So if you put a heart-shaped filter on there, the light enters in a heart shape. Easy enough?

NEED

Camera + lens with low F stop (1.8 is good, higher can work, but will be less awesome)
Black construction paper
Scissors (cheaters can use a hole punch too)
Tape

The filter is all construction paper, which makes it super easy and cheap. You need a nice dark color, so no light can get through.

Trace the shape of your lens on the paper, and then cut the circle out. Make sure it wil be big enough to fit around the lens.



Cut the shape of your choice out of the very center, a hole about the size of a sunflower seed should work for most lenses. Stars and hearts seem to be popular among the Flickr crowd, I went for stars and drops, and I cut them out by hand (uphill both ways, in the snow).

Now, you can either tape the filter straight onto the lens, or cut another strip of paper to wrap around the lens, and give it something to hold onto. I opted for the latter, since that seems to block out more invasive bokeh-brusing light.



Then tape the filter on top, and you're ready to go!



This works best where there are lots of points of light, to give the filter something to distort. Since it doesn't actually change the shape of the picture, some people put a non-blurred out subject in the foreground, but that seems contrary to the fuzzy-fest bokeh fad.

To be sure you're really making a true Bokeh, and not some other boring normal photo, best to make sure that nothing is in focus.



Bokeh? Yes! From our christmas tree, with a crooked hand-cut star filter



Bokeh? Well, there's plenty of blur, but see how your eyes can focus on something in the picture? That's a big bokeh no-no. Some people would call it a bokeh anyway, but I'm a purist, so no.



Bokeh? Yes. Sunset outside. Nice and fuzzy.

There you have it - Brilliant Bokeh Magic!

(This guy got smart and used a filter holder. For when tape and construction paper just aren't classy enough.)