Beautiful Bokeh

Sunday Reads

Laura Currie
27th November 2022

Just zone in...

Bokeh is a much-loved aesthetic when it comes to imagery – for both stills and video, but what exactly is it? This word came to be (in the English vocabulary at least) in 1997, when a magazine called ‘Photo Techniques’ coined the term. It’s a rough translation of the Japanese word for blur. It’s nothing to do with motion blur, but refers instead to areas of the image that are out of focus when using a shallow depth of field. Your eyes are drawn to the important part of the image, giving it more impact. There is endless debate and bickering as to the correct pronunciation of bokeh, so I’m glad I’m hiding behind my keyboard and not speaking on camera!

Akin Cakiner

Bogdan Cotos

You can get software that will blur out what it thinks is the background, but it’s often a bit hit and miss. It’s clumsy; the blur effect sometimes bleeds into the subject’s space in the frame and you can end up with weird halos. The subject often looks superimposed because the light looks unnatural – it’s trying to make the background look further away than it really is. Our vote? Get it right in-camera; you just can’t beat the real thing!

The ideal lenses for capturing beautiful bokeh are fast primes. Lovely, crispy, responsive lenses with beefy maximum apertures are the way to go. Primes are generally deemed to be sharper than zooms, and you can opt for f/1.2 lenses without being weighed down like you would be with a large aperture zoom – so you’ll be more inclined to take it out with you. Longer focal lengths will give you much stronger bokeh – 50mm and 85mm will do a gorgeous job, and the closer you are to the subject, the more emphasised the effect will be. Macro lenses are also an excellent choice as you can really zone in on miniscule detail…

Manuel T

If you want to delve deeper into the magic of bokeh, dedicated ‘swirly’ bokeh lenses, such as Lomography’s Petzval offerings will give you even more interesting effects. These were originally developed by the German-Hungarian maths professor Joseph Petzval in Vienna in 1840, with the help of Peter Wilhelm Friedrich von Voigtländer, (yes, him). These lenses are still produced today and can be used with either film or interchangeable lens digital cameras, so you can use them for video too. They offer an arty, nostalgic aesthetic and are completely manual, plus, you adjust the aperture by slotting in discs with different sized holes!

Shot with a Petzval 55mm f/1.7:

Aunnop Suthumno

Specular highlights and light sources are beautifully enhanced when sitting in the bokeh zone – by being out of focus in the foreground, background or both. They are transformed into glowing orbs that give a sort of magical feel to the scene. This is a really popular subject for bokeh work, if you have a good eye, it’s relatively simple to create super high-end looking images.

Allef Vinicius

Lance Reis

Hans Ott

Olena Sergienko

Generally, smooth, round bokeh orbs are regarded as ‘better’, and more pleasing to the eye. They are less distracting. Cheaper lenses tend to have fewer aperture blades, resulting in angular orbs. An image shot with only a five-blade aperture will capture less attractive, angular five-sided orbs.

But as the shape of the orbs is dictated by the shape of the hole/aperture that the light is refracted through, you can actually use this principle to get really creative! You can buy, or even make your own paper cut-out stencils to attach to the front of the lens like a filter, and as long as you have bright light sources, like a cluster of fairy lights or candles, then they will expose onto the sensor in that shape!

Gerald Stott

Meagan Carsience

Playing with Bokeh can be a really fun creative process; you can experiment with lots of different techniques to create wonderfully atmospheric images. Just seek out some interesting shapes, perspectives and light sources, pick a fast lens and get shooting!