Bokeh Experiments - How To

Seasons greetings everyone.

After my earlier post of Instant miniature studio many had left comments saying it was useful. Thanks for your comments and feedback. With Christmas and the new year aproaching, here is an interesting walk through to make your photographs more interesting this season. This time we are going to play around with the bokeh.

Its fairly simple to get a bokeh like the below one. You need to keep the lens in a low aperture like f/1.8 and with some back ground light. 

But what do to when you want to make it more interesting like the one below? 

Here is how to do it. You can easily try it at home. You will need:

1. Camera and a low aperture lens (50 mm f/1.8)

2. Chart paper, preferably black.

3. Compass and Scale.

4. Paper cutting knife and scissors. 

Measure the diameter of your lens or simply go with the measurement of your filter that you got for the lens. Use that measurement to make circular rings in the chart paper using the compass and scissors. Make sure the ring exactly fits in the lens (one would need to remove any lens filters attached, for this experiment). Now draw shapes(hearts, square, clove, anything) in the center of the circular paper ring and make sure the shapes are exactly at the center. Use the paper cutting knife to cut out the shape that was drawn.

Now it's almost done, fit the circular rings in front of your lens and start clicking. Enjoy the custom bokeh shapes. 

Technical mumbo-jumbo or How It Actually works:
Technically the shape of the bokeh is controlled by the shape of the aperture. Ideally the aperture is made of multiple blades to form a near circular shape. As the number of blades differ from lens to lens, by keeping a high f-number like f/5.6 the bokeh produced might be polygon in shape. Here since the light entering the lens is controlled by a custom shape which overrides the default circular ring of the aperture, it gives the bokeh a custom shape. This said, it is left to each one's creativity to decide the shape and the kind of picture to use these techniques on. 

P.S. It was fun to use the compass after eight years, last I used it was in the Engineering drawing class in the first semester of college.

Instant miniature studio - How To

Two weeks down the Nikon D90, its so tempting to keep it down and she hates it. :-) Last weekend I got a Shrek toy as part of the Happy Meal. Soon after coming home, I wanted to take few snaps of it. So quickly thought of home studio lighting setup to take photos.

All you need is

- A note book, preferably plain white sheets in them.

- Alternate source of light, like table lamp.

- Tripod (preferred)

Nikon D90 on the tripod + table lamp + note book with 50mm lens as the subject

Place the note book like a slanting 'L', this gives white flooring and white background (laptop and few white sheets will also do). It would be nice to slide a paper over the edge, so that there are no sharp curves on the background. Make sure there is no folds in the paper that's used (since it will caste shadow). Set the tripod in front of the notebook with the camera mounted. Now place the table lamb between the tripod and notebook, such that it does come inside the frame of the camera. Also make sure the table lamp does not flare the lens. No place the subject in the tip of the paper that stands sliding and start shooting.

Keep the light at different angles to the subject to get various effect on the subject and control how the shadow is cast. Prefer using the timer shutter to avoid any chance of camera shake. 

Here are some samples and more photos at flickr

Go ahead and comment your feedback and questions.

Rava laddu and mom's love

Rava Laddu or put it in a simple way its spherical mixture of rava and powered sugar with cashew jelled together with Ghee! Duhh!!! :) My mom is famous for her rava laddu, she won many hearts at my office on 2006 Diwali. Also I'm an adhered fan for them. I would make sure that she makes them at lest once in a year either for a Diwali or Christmas.

This time, I spy'd around the kitchen to get the recipe.

Ingredients: White Rava (Sooji), Sugar, Cashew, Dry grapes (optional), Badham (optional) and Ghee.

• Fry the rava in a dry hot pan for some time, so that it becomes crispy. But make sure the color does not change. To be exact it should be at the verge of changing its color.
• Now, powder the rava and powder the sugar! Yes, powder them in a mixer grinder and mix them well. Keep the mixture as much dry as possible. (my mom made sure this by not allowing me near it)
• Break the cashew into smaller pieces by hand and mix it with the mixture.
  
• Put the ghee in a pan and heat it until its liquid.
  
• Now comes the crucial and trickiest part of the recipe. You need to have immense practice to master it. Slowly pour a scoop of ghee in the mixture and roll your fingers over it make a small balls (like a Table tennis ball) Tighten your fist and make it stay in shape. Caution: Its hot molten, ghee don't hurt yourself leave the kitcken experts handle it. That's why I just help in tighten the rounds.
  
• Place it on a paper to let it dry! so that the extra ghee is absorbed as well it doesn't stick.

Yeepee! its ready now. Stack them in a vessel and eat one when ever you enter the kitchen.