Day 20: Bokeh: Oh, did I struggle with this one. I spent ages googling, watching YouTube videos, and playing with my settings {which I now know SO much more about, thanks to this challenge} and pleading for help via Twitter. This is where I throw a huge shoutout to
Jenna and
Bec for their help; ladies, you are wonderful.
Anyway, at Jenna's suggestion, I headed outdoors to find some leaves & make use of the sun behind them to attempt to create the Bokeh effect. I had a prop on hand {one of my wedding 'stache straws'} and spent a while snapping away. I ditched it for a few shots, too. I hoped I had managed one, came inside to look out of the glare... and I DID IT!
I put my DSLR (Nikon 3100 base model lens) on 'A' aperture mode, turned the aperture to the lowest I could get, which was f/4 & made my ISO 800. Then it was just a matter of playing with the manual focus!
Interested in seeing the 'stache attempt? It's not as clear as I would like, but you can definitely still see the blur.
For more information & to check out the other participants, click on the image below, or follow the
Flickr stream.
Can you share the settings you used? I'm having a really hard time mastering this. I have some orange halloween/christmas lights out and I think I'm cheating by manually putting my camera out of focus. It can't be that easy, right? I'm failing at this one big time!
ReplyDeleteOoh this looks really tricky! Great job, I'm loving the photos :)
ReplyDeleteAw thanks for the shout out! I am always happy to help.
ReplyDeleteMichelle - Have you tried focusing on something closer to the camera and then have the Halloween lights in the background? For example, if you put a pumpkin on a table in front of the lights, and make the camera focus on the pumpkin, the lights behind it will blur. Make sure you have a low aperture! (I like to use f2.8 for bokeh but you don't always have to go that low.)