Flower bokeh photo10/29/2023 ![]() Technically, the images reaching the back of the camera will be identical, but as they’re captured by the sensor, the APS-C file gets cropped. This difference is not because of the sensor’s inherent properties but rather because the smaller sensor effectively crops the image. The image from the APS-C camera will look tighter, while the full-frame image will be wider. If you compare side-by-side images from APS-C and full-frame cameras, both using 50mm lenses, you’ll notice that the photos are different. Have you ever wondered how the size of your camera’s sensor affects bokeh? You’re not alone! Many photographers, especially when choosing a new camera, want to know if there’s a link between sensor size and beautiful background bokeh. That’s how you can get a shot like this one: This often works as you’d expect, where uniform elements (e.g., a forest of green leaves) create very smooth bokeh, while messy, jagged elements (e.g., a crowd of people, cars, and houses) create very distracting bokeh.īut there are other background qualities to consider, too.įor instance, if you compose your image so that the light shines through an area of the background, you’ll often capture stunning bokeh effects. Some backgrounds are easy to blur, and other backgrounds are much more difficult. The farther your subject moves from the background, the more beautiful the result. In fact, increasing the subject-background distance is one of the easiest ways to create better bokeh, especially if you don’t own a wide-aperture lens. But if you bring the child out and away from the tree, the bark will begin to blur. If you put them just in front of the tree (so the bark touches their back), both the child and the tree will be in focus, and you’ll get very little bokeh to speak of. ![]() Say you’re photographing a child in front of a tree. If your background is close to your subject, it will be less blurred – and hence the bokeh effect will be weaker.īut if your background is far from your subject, it will be more blurred, and will generally look very nice. The greater the distance between the subject and the background, the stronger the bokeh effect! Distance between the camera and your subject So for the best bokeh, purchase a lens with a long focal length (e.g., 200mm), a wide maximum aperture (e.g., f/2.8), and plenty of aperture blades (9+). Third, the longer the lens, the more it compresses the background, and the blurrier the background becomes. More blades equal a more circular aperture, which in turn corresponds to more pleasing bokeh. (Note that aperture shape is primarily determined by the aperture blade count, which you can find on the specification sheet of every lens. Because aperture shape generally determines the shape of the bokeh, the more circular the aperture, the smoother the bokeh effect. Second, some lenses offer more circular apertures, whereas other lenses have hexagonal, septagonal, or octagonal apertures. As discussed above, if you can open your lens’s aperture really wide, the bokeh will look great – whereas a closed-down aperture will produce nervous, distracting bokeh that doesn’t complement the subject. Ultimately, a wide aperture will create a better bokeh effect – because the wider the aperture, the more background blur the lens will produce.įirst, the larger the lens’s maximum aperture, the better the bokeh quality. The aperture is a hole in the lens, and the size corresponds to your camera’s f-number setting.Ī low f-number such as f/1.8 or f/2.8 will give you a wide aperture, while a high f-number such as f/11 or f/16 will give you a narrow aperture. Let’s look at each factor in turn, starting with: 1. Distance between the subject and the background.Distance between the camera and your subject.Aperture size (i.e., the size of the hole in the lens that lets in light).Instead, the bokeh quality in your photos is influenced by five factors: The 5 factors determining the bokeh effect in your photosīeginners often struggle to capture lovely bokeh effects, and it’s because bokeh can be complicated it’s not as simple as adjusting one setting on your camera and calling it a day. Later on in this article, I’ll explain what causes good versus bad bokeh, but for now, just know that not all bokeh looks equally gorgeous. So you can get beautiful bokeh (when the out-of-focus areas are smooth and stunning), or you can get bad bokeh (when the out-of-focus areas are too detailed or appear jagged). Note that, generally speaking, the term “bokeh” refers to any background (or foreground) blur in an image. Portrait photographers often rely on creamy background bokeh to elevate their compositions, but you can also find heavy use of bokeh in wildlife photography, product photography, food photography, and event photography. Many professional photographers use this bokeh effect in their images it helps the main subject stand out, plus it can add an element of artistry to the overall shot.
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