What You'll Be Creating‘Tis the season and with all of those holiday lights around,
who can resist a little bit of festive bokeh? In this tutorial I’ll show you
how to create something a little bit different to get a new twist from those
tree lights!
What You’ll Need
What you'll need for this tutorial
Tape
A pencil
A sharp craft knife
Scissors
Thin black card
A low-light lens (a lens with a large maximum aperture)
A surface to cut on (I recommend a chopping board)
1. Make a Lens Hood
The first thing you need to do is cut part of your card into a strip wide enough to fit around your lens: Cut the card into a stripYou'll have something like this: Strip of card for around your lens
2. Make Your Template
Next, draw around your lens with the outer glass (where the
lens cap is) face down: Draw around your lensYou don’t need to be neat about this part. Once you have
your circle, draw another circle about an inch out like this: You should have two rough circlesCut out the larger circle then cut out little triangles from
the outside, to your inner circle without cutting into the inner circle like
so: Cut triangle shapes into the outer circleDo five or six of these until you can bend the outer parts like this: Fold the outer circle in We’re going to use this to bend around the strip we made before.
3. Cut Out Your Custom Shape
Draw your custom shape in the middle of your circle. Keep it
quite small, a large one won’t work very well. For ease of demonstration I’ve chosen a small Christmas tree. You do need to be
quite neat about this part as it’ll show up on your bokeh if you have any rough
edges. Once you’ve drawn your shape, cut around it carefully with the craft
knife. Remember to use your cutting surface, I don’t want the blame for any
holes in carpets! Cut out your custom bokeh shape in the middle of the circle
4. Make Your Attachment
Take the strip of card you cut out earlier and wrap it around your lens: Wrap your strip of card around your lensTape it to itself to form a snug fitting (but easily
removable) tube. Next, take your custom bokeh card and tape it to your tube, covering
any gaps with tape. Tape it to the lens, covering any gapsYou should now have something that fits to your lens but comes off easily to look like this: Your finished attachment should look something like this (or neater!)The size of your ‘tube’ does matter, so you may want to trim
it down after you’ve tried it out.
Results
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The technical stuff
It’s not easy to get great results in Auto as you’ll confuse
your light meter massively so you may need to flip to Manual mode, or at the
very least Aperture mode. Choose your lowest aperture, a fast(ish) shutter
speed and remember to manual focus.
Examples
This is a fun method of creating some really abstract bokeh
shots. Here’s what my Christmas tree looked like with the custom filter
attached: Christmas tree bokeh using tree lights - you can really see the shape of the tree hereAnother example with a splash of red this timeThis works with any points of light so try it
with candles or get some battery powered fairy lights for custom bokeh on the
move!
TDasany
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