Tips and tricks for the popular bokeh effect when taking photos
Do you want to create the atmospheric background blur directly while taking a picture and don't know exactly which camera is best with which setting?
It is best to use the rules of thumb for strong bokeh as a guide.
The most important rules of camera technology for a strong bokeh effect:
- Large camera sensors create more bokeh than smaller sensors . A thick full-frame SLR camera (for example Canon R6, Nikon Z5 or Sony Alpha 7R IV) has more potential for a bokeh effect than a camera with a smaller APS-C sensor; Compact cameras or cell phones with even smaller sensors deliver even less bokeh, actually only for close-ups.
- Telephoto lenses have more bokeh potential than wide-angle lenses . If you want to highlight your subject in front of a blurred background, choose at least a normal focal length, better a light or strong telephoto setting.
- The wider the aperture, the blurrier the unsharp background will appear . Aperture 1.4 or 2.8 produce a good bokeh effect. Apertures 8 or 16, on the other hand, show the background much more sharply.
These three rules of thumb also apply in combination : The strongest bokeh is created with a full-frame camera with a powerful telephoto lens that you use with an open aperture, for example with an aperture of 2.8.
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| The background appears pleasantly blurred, bright points form blur circles - that is the typical bokeh. |
With fashion shoots that take place outside and not in the studio, you see exactly that: The professionals take photos with full-frame cameras and often use a powerful telephoto lens with a focal length of 300 millimeters and the widest aperture 2.8. The lens alone costs 2500 to 6000 euros, depending on the manufacturer, and weighs around two and a half kilograms - but this way the background is perfectly blurred, the models and their clothes stand out clearly.
Also popular and still a guarantee of good bokeh are zooms with a focal length of 70-200 millimeters at an aperture of 2.8 - they weigh around 1.5 kilos and cost 700 to 1800 dollars.
Fashion photographers create bokeh with telephoto lenses and an open aperture. The models stand out well against the background.
It's all in the details
However: good technical data is not everything. A camera, for example, may have a large sensor, but a faint lens. Another camera with a smaller sensor then provides more blurring, provided the lens has a much wider aperture (for example aperture 1.4 instead of 3.3).
And the exact nature of the blurring is also being discussed intensively by photo enthusiasts: the resulting blurring rings are circular, oval or square, depending on the optics. Circular is considered desirable. The lens manufacturers support this trend with lens apertures with eleven or nine instead of six blades - this avoids angular blurring rings. Depending on the lens, there is also a light contour around the blur ring, which many image designers would like to avoid.
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| When taking night shots with point light sources, the blur circles are particularly clear, even if not perfectly round here. |
Be careful when choosing an aperture
Those who already have a camera and lens can only influence the blurring with the aperture: for example, switch the camera to aperture priority; the function is also called aperture preselection and is usually labeled A on the rotary switch of the camera. Now you set the aperture manually, the camera automatically calculates the appropriate exposure time.
For maximum bokeh, many photographers set the most open aperture, for example 1.4, 1.8, 2.8 or 3.3, depending on the lens. However, when the aperture is fully open, most lenses do not offer their full performance. For example, the main subject, which is already in focus, appears a little sharper if you do not shoot with the largest possible aperture. For the best sharpness in the main subject, you should often close the aperture a little, for example from 1.4 to 2.0 or from 2.8 to 4.0.
And it's not just the image sharpness that suffers when the aperture is completely open. When the aperture is fully open, other errors such as edge shading (vignetting) or annoying color fringes (chromatic aberration) occur. With an open aperture, the entire picture may even appear a bit soft and low in contrast. There are lenses with huge apertures such as 1.2 or even 0.95 - this promises a strong bokeh effect, but the overall sharpness is disappointing at maximum aperture, so that you stop a bit.
If your camera does not offer a preset aperture, you can achieve a wide aperture for good bokeh, even with motif programs for sports or portraits. If, on the other hand, you set the camera to landscape or architecture, the device usually dims and creates a relatively detailed background that hardly shows any blurring.
The image structure is a decisive factor in the bokeh effect
It is not just the lens and camera that determine a nicely blurred background - the composition of the image is also important: create a lot of space between the main subject and the surroundings. For example, move your portrait model further away from a wall or from plants; the background will then appear blurred in the photo. Also with macro photos, make sure that your main subject is far from the background .
And: blurring that is loosened up by blurring rings is particularly appealing. These blurring rings occur particularly with bright points of light in a dark environment. You can get a nice bokeh effect in these situations, for example:
- Lights in the night
- Light reflections on water, glass or metal
- Backlit in leaves and other partly transparent motifs
Generally test different arrangements and camera positions . Also check how the blurring rings change when you stop down slightly (for example from 2.8 to 4.0). Special lenses , for example tilt-shift optics, which were originally intended for undistorted architectural photos, or inexpensive effect lenses such as Lensbaby, offer further options for deliberately distributed blurring .
Simulate the blurring on the internet
On the websites of the camera and lens manufacturers, you can simulate different zoom levels and background blurring using sliders.
Set the sensor size in advance, then experiment virtually with the aperture and focal length.
Try these offers:
Samyang
Nikon
Canon
Create a bokeh effect on your mobile phone
Originally, camera phones hardly allowed bokeh due to the small sensor area. But newer top cell phones in particular provide background blurring: the most expensive cell phones have relatively wide apertures such as 1.6 and also relatively large sensors from the compact camera sector, for example with a sensor size of 1 / 1.7 inch. This creates a clear background blur, at least with nearby subjects - try it with a blossom or a coffee cup.
Important : Before taking a picture, tap your main subject on the screen so that your phone focuses in the right place.
Newer high-end cell phones also offer a function that, depending on the manufacturer, is called live focus or aperture : First you take a picture, and then you control the background blurring with a regulator. To do this, display the image in the gallery and tap on the symbol for the subsequent adjustment of the background blur.
You can adjust the bokeh effect while recording; but it is much more convenient to take care of it later. This is also suitable for atmospheric portraits with a fragrant, blurred background - however, the background blurring does not always look realistic, and sometimes it also appears completely inappropriate in the main subject.
Bokeh effect by computer program
You can also create the background blurring afterwards with an image program on the computer.
At first glance, the process looks clear:
You can also create the background blurring afterwards with an image program on the computer.
1. You select the background around the main motif, for example with the quick selection tool.
2. You run a blur filter over the selected background.
But it's not that easy: With some backgrounds, the distance to the main subject changes across the picture surface, for example with a table photographed at an angle from above. In this case you have to create a so-called alpha channel with a gray scale gradient in the image program. The gradient controls how strong the blurring is in which image region.
And: a common soft focus such as the well-known “Gaussian soft focus” does not do the job well. The background is blurred; but the result looks weak, mainly because this soft focus swallows highlights and thus lowers the contrast. Magical rings of light around backlight points are out of the question.
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| The Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop CC blur gallery produces excellent bokeh with beautiful blur circles. You control the effect primarily with the "Bokeh lights" and "Brightness range" sliders. |
Nice bokeh with the soft focus gallery
That is why you should use a special photographic soft focus effect on the computer. You will get excellent bokeh results with Photoshop CS6 from 2012 or with the current Photoshop CC. There you open the Filter, Blur Gallery submenu. We are testing the tilt-shift sub-function here.
Increase the blur value in the upper right corner significantly, for example to 130 pixels, so that you can see a strong effect. Then move the lines over the image until the desired image areas are blurred.
The trick is only now: You are using the “Effects” area within the dialog box. There you raise the value for bokeh lights to 55 percent. The bright areas of the image now eat up completely, because the brightness range slider also shows the section from 191 to 255, i.e. very bright pixels. Now change these values: Set the brightness range, for example, 138 to 141. This means that nice soft-focus circles appear in the mid-tones and the brightest areas of the image no longer appear excessively bright.
Now you have many possibilities to experiment: move, reduce or expand the brightness range and also change the values for bokeh lights and blur. The following principle applies: the higher the value of bokeh lights, the narrower you define the brightness range.
The Bokeh Color slider creates more color saturation in the bokeh circles. This is sometimes attractive in artificial light shots, for example in cities at night. In the case of pure daylight photos like in our garden café, however, you should not increase the value of bokeh color.
So you can see how you can create a magical bokeh effect - directly while taking photos or afterwards on the computer. Your options are unlimited.
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