@rosie00 Hi Lesley - your question made me go to Google - I know very little about the technicalities of photography! ( trying to learn though...) So here's a bit of what I found out:
In photography, bokeh is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image produced by a lens. Bokeh has been defined as "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light".
To achieve bokeh in an image, you need to use a fast lens—the faster the better. You'll want to use a lens with at least an f/2.8 aperture, with faster apertures of f/2, f/1.8 or f/1.4 being ideal.
I had no idea what a fast lens was! So:
A lens with a larger maximum aperture (that is, a smaller minimum f-number) is called a "fast lens" because it can achieve the same exposure with a faster shutter speed.
HOW TO ACHIEVE NICE BOKEH (in plain English!)
Use the right lens. ...
Select a large aperture. ...
Get close to your subject.
Focus on what you want to have sharp. ...
Put your subject far from the background you want blurred out.
It is interesting hey? And, They make it sound so easy!! Cheers - hope this makes sense - and thanks for spurring me on to look it up.
@robz Wow, thanks Rob for all that information..I should have looked it up myself. Sometimes I don't understand the explanations either! I know to use a large aperture in low light - the blur I get is pot luck, I am not sure how to achieve a particular effect. A lot to learn eh! I have learnt such a lot since doing this project.
And to me, bokeh is a Japanese word. I looked on sci.lang.japan and it says "The word "boke", pronounced "bok-ay", and usually written ぼけ or ボケ, has a number of different meanings. It can mean stupid, unaware, or clueless. This word is also used in photography to mean "deliberately out of focus", and has come into English as "bokeh", with an additional "h" to show the pronunciation."
@jyokota Hi Junko - sorry to be so long replying to you. Thanks so much for the interesting info - I had to laugh at the original meanings - "unaware" and "clueless" are both pretty apt definitions for my photographic skills! :) The " deliberately out of focus" phrase makes sense, although I think it must be easier to do with a more sophisticated camera. Anyway - good fun trying. Cheers Rob
In photography, bokeh is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image produced by a lens. Bokeh has been defined as "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light".
To achieve bokeh in an image, you need to use a fast lens—the faster the better. You'll want to use a lens with at least an f/2.8 aperture, with faster apertures of f/2, f/1.8 or f/1.4 being ideal.
I had no idea what a fast lens was! So:
A lens with a larger maximum aperture (that is, a smaller minimum f-number) is called a "fast lens" because it can achieve the same exposure with a faster shutter speed.
HOW TO ACHIEVE NICE BOKEH (in plain English!)
Use the right lens. ...
Select a large aperture. ...
Get close to your subject.
Focus on what you want to have sharp. ...
Put your subject far from the background you want blurred out.
It is interesting hey? And, They make it sound so easy!! Cheers - hope this makes sense - and thanks for spurring me on to look it up.