a little bokeh trick.

This is what you'll see when you stand at the balcony in my home.

This is what you'll see if you look through my camera's viewfinder (lens focus ring turned to *nearly* the shortest focal length)


I got this idea from some photography blog I found a long time ago. Get some black/dark coloured paper (to minimise internal reflections), and make something like this. Kinda like a cylinder which fits over your lens.

Make sure that the little fancy hole you cut into the black paper is smaller than the aperture of your lens. And I think this trick only works with lenses with apertures of f 1.8 and larger. (yes Jael, you can use your 50mm f1.8 portrait lens for this! :D )

Slide this over your lens, and you're good to go!

Aim your viewfinder at some distant lights,

and let the fun commence!

For the picture above, I actually pointed the camera at the same direction as seen in the first 2 pictures of this post. Fascinating, huh. :D

Swimming pool lights!

Enough of program mode. Decreasing the shutter speed and setting the aperture to f 1.4 in manual mode... The background magically darkens off.

I was so amused by this that I spent over half an hour at the balcony shooting. Nope, none of these pictures were photoshopped. And nope, I haven't grown up yet. :D