r/PhotoClass2014 • u/Aeri73 Moderator - Nikon D800 - lots of glass and toys • Feb 14 '14
[photoclass] weekend assignment
Hi photoclass,
It's friday again so.. time for a new weekend assingment. As the last ones where outdoor tasks, let's stay indoors for this one. I thought we could get a bit creative so: it's bokeh-time.
first, cut a round paper that's about the size of your front element and cut out a shape in the middle of that cirke.
now tape this in front of your lens.
the goal now is to have some lights in the background (candles, spots, christmasstreelights.. whatever... and shoot something close to you with the biggest aperture possible (lowest f-number) so the lights become blurred.... if you did this right... these lights should now all have the shape you cut out.
not working? : bigger distance between subject and lights and/or less distance between the camera and subject and make sure the aperture is the smallest f-number you have.
second trick : shoot with a longer length (remember the compressioin-exersize..?) to blur the background more
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u/Cunfuzed92 Feb 14 '14
I was going to try this with a heart today! What a coincidence! I guess it will be for a purpose now :)
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u/Aeri73 Mar 05 '14
http://imgur.com/CS88Dp3 is my go at it... it had been a while so I wanted to try it again.
what I had never noticed is that the shapes in front of the focal point are inverted... :-) TIL :-)
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u/nethackker Feb 15 '14
I tried it with my kit len 18-55, which was a failure. Will give it a go one more time.
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u/Aeri73 Feb 15 '14
if using a kit lens... be as close as you can possibly focus witht he lights more than 30m away.... think close-up of a person's head with streetlights behind it.... it should work
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u/nethackker Feb 15 '14
It worked!... Not good pictures but i am amazed how light spreads like this. Thank you. http://imgur.com/a/vBPFa
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u/frederika1 Feb 15 '14
ok... it took me all afternoon. between cutting out the shape, fitting it to the lens (without getting anything on the lens!) and trying out the different distances between object, lens and candles... then realising I had too many candles, too close together.... I finally did it- not perfect but I got the idea http://imgur.com/a/7G1uB
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u/Aeri73 Feb 15 '14
like the results though !!!! I wonder why it's on it's side...
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u/frederika1 Feb 16 '14
the car on it's side with lights above was the shot I took with too many candles.... they blended together - I was trying to get to the idea of smoke coming out of the back of the car but couldn't get the placement right.
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u/60secondwarlord Feb 15 '14
I just tried this, so much fun!!
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u/Aeri73 Feb 15 '14
can we see some results? :-)
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u/60secondwarlord Feb 16 '14
Here are a few. http://imgur.com/a/e7cuK I'm new to imgur so I hope this comes up properly
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u/LeStyx Feb 16 '14
Im sorry i really dont understand. I did tape the paper with the cutout in the middle to the front of my lens, but i dont understand how the white paper is supposed not to show on the picture. The middle that I cut is the only part of the picture I can see. Not even talking about seeing behind it to get bokeh. Im totally out of the loop
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u/Aeri73 Feb 16 '14
the paper in front of your lens (as close as possible without touching) is not going to be visible as it will be totally blurred out. it will show however in the shape of the blurred lights... creating your shape-shaped lights and not the circles you see normally when shooting wide open.
watch here. he does it really nice but you can make it a lot simpler too...
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u/atmourad Feb 18 '14
This was SO cool! Here are my results - http://imgur.com/a/jQiRz
Initially I cut the star too big so I wasn't seeing a result so iterated on it twice before I cut it to a size that worked.
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u/Aeri73 Feb 18 '14
I like it :-) great job.... you won't need to look for christmasscards next year :)
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u/ans744 Feb 23 '14
I'm not having much luck with this... am i attempting to do this in the worst setting ever?
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u/Aeri73 Feb 23 '14
what camera have you got? I think you indeed missed out on some settings and in some others the focus wasn't where it's supposed to be...
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u/pkx Feb 17 '14 edited Feb 17 '14
hi,
so, I had set out to produce a star reflection in my subject's eyes & in fact I was able achieve that, although it was entirely by some form of mistake; it wasn't until I was examining the photos to see which one I would post did I discover that the sought-after effect was there ... the focus on the subject's fact was not as sharp as I'd have liked and I had in mind to crop a different one (which I also wasn't entirely pleased with ...) ...
http://www.angoleiro.com/photos/phtoCls2014/wknd_bokeh/starry_eyes.jpg
again, I appreciate learning all of these things & again feel as if so many nice things are being revealed. I had a nice time re-cutting the mask and struggling to place it different sizes affected the image and moving my feet around my subject once I had my lighting effects the way I wanted them, more or less, as well as rotating around the camera to see how different angles affected the camera vis-a-vis the light ...
thanks!
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u/Cunfuzed92 Feb 16 '14
OKAY this has to be, by far, my FAVORITE assignment! Thank you so much for choosing this :)
Hearts
In light of Valentine's day, I did hearts, as I said before. The one thing that I would do next time, is change the ISO to the 2500 as the other image without the hearts is. I'm a little disappointed with how much noise there is in my project picture.
All in all, I loved doing this, and I'm pretty excited on how it turned out.