Simona A. emailed and asked:
Q. Can you really achieve bokeh without a prime lens? I’ve been using my camera kit with a 18-55 lens and I have yet to get that blurred effect.
A. Excellent question as always! Before you dive into the answer, learn what bokeh is here. Simona, to answer your question, yes it absolutely is possible with your 18-55mm lens! Bokeh is achieved by a combination of the following factors:
- Maximum aperture (smallest f-stop)
- Longest focal length that works
- minimum distance to your subject
- maximum distance from your subject to the background
In plain english, zoom in as far as your lens allows, open up your aperture as much as it allows (you can set your camera to AV aperture priority mode and turn the dial all the way down to the smallest number), get as close to you subject as possible and make sure they aren’t too close to the lights from which you are hoping to achieve bokeh circles.
My personal advice about bokeh is this: In the beginning, don’t set out to purposefully take bokeh shots. You might be disappointed when you find it’s hard to force. Rather, look for bokeh in your shots after and look at the metadata of that image (in the computer it can tell you the lens, the focal length used, what the f-stop (aperture) was etc). Then you can see how the above bullet points actually work in practice, not only the theory. I love getting surprise bokeh. Look for it – it’s everywhere!
Thanks for your question, Simona! And don’t y’all forget to keep sending me your questions. Leave them in the comments below, email them, tweet them or leave them on my wall.
