In my previous post about Custom Bokeh, I mentioned about how to create custom shaped bokeh for still photography. On Thursday, I visited the opening season of Mindil Beach Markets in Darwin with fireworks and I practice the custom bokeh for that. The result was pretty entertaining and colorful, I couldnt stop myself watching them and here it is the video:
I was at the Australian Superbike Championship 2012 this afternoon and was surprised by how little was the crowd at Hidden Valley, Darwin. Maybe it was on Sunday and I came bit late, but fortunately I had a chance to see Crusty Demons. The Superbikes themselves was OK.
Crusty Demons performance were too short and didnt do too many acts but I got a chance to shot their styles. These are some that made me go wow and thought that these guys are 6. I shot these acts with cheap standard kit lense 55-250mm Canon:
Doing macro photography could be very fun as you can create a photo that your eyes won’t see in everyday life or bare eyes. It requires a special lens to capture a tiny object as a close up in details. But I just learned recently that you can do a macro photography without special pricy lenses and get a way around it. One of my photographer friends mentioned to me the other week that we can do a macro photography with a reversed lens. I was not sure what he meant at that time but he said it’s literally just reversing your lens back to front.
Not going to elaborate the science of how the reverse lens work but its pretty cool (you can see the science here: https://stephenelliot.com/2007/05/15/reverse-lens-macro-photography-tutorial/). You can just hold your lens back to front against the camera or buy a special reverse lens mount.
So then I did an experiment on it and the result is surprised me, better than I thought. This experiment I used a standard cheap lens kit EFS 18-55mm, I don’t have any insect or something more exciting to capture so I just took whatever I have in the office :
This is how I did it without reverse lens mount
Experiment I:
Gargamel | Normal lens at focal length 55mm maximum closest 
Gargamel | Same lens setting but reversed and closed up
Experiment II:
Watch | Normal setting 55mm 
Watch | Reverse Lens
Bokeh is originally a Japanese word meaning ‘blur’ or ‘haze’ (Wikipedia). So, in photography, bokeh is used when you take a photo with a very shallow focus (big aperture), the area that are out of focus will be blurry. Bokeh is mostly used for night photography where the light is out of focus and blurry and give it a bit of artistic feeling on it. Recently, I made an experiment with custom bokeh shapes with Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens.
How?
Basically, all we need to do is just covering the lens with shaped filter in black. I use lens cup with whole on it and put my custom shaped filter behind it: simple and save place in your camera bag. Another way is you could make a filter that you can put on top of your lens like most tutorial on youtube do. Or you can buy factory made custom bokeh filters, neatness guarantee but at the moment, I’m showing you my DIY filters.
Here are what I did, would be more shopisticated when the lights are more colorful and make it in video with movements. Will wait til the wet season gone and can not wait for Mindil Beach opening or Territory Day with lots of fireworks:) :
Here are the results:
And this is what the filter looks like:
