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Bokehlicious, baby!

I caught sight of an old DRTV video while trawling Youtube last night and decided to show it to a couple of noob/casual photographer friends to save me explaining the technique to them. They loved how fun and easy it is to pull off. It's hardly a new technique but I thought that someone reading this here might enjoy it too. :)



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5jjr_vKruU
 
heheh Glad you enjoyed it. :)

It's not so exciting when you think about it though - the aperture blades are what dictate the bokeh form. Hence, when shooting wide open we (should) get perfect circular balls as the aperture is circular. As we stop down we start to introduce the 'edged' shapes as the blades close up and form a progessively more hexagonal/pentagonal/octagonal etc shapes, depending on how many blades the lens' aperture has.

This is also why having more blades, and rounded blades, imrove bokeh smoothness when stopping down, and also dictate how many points our starsbursts have when shooting significantly stopped down.

Apertures with even numbers of blades will produce the same amount of starburst points as there are blades (an 8 bladed aperture will produce 8 pointed stars - one point for each internal corner of the aperture shape), and whereby apertures with odd numbers of blades will produce double the amount of starburst points as there are blades (as each internal corner that forms the spike is directly opposite an edge, thus no convergence along the same path as with even sided shapes). Gah, it's easier to draw it. :P

Just imagine what starburst effects you would get out of an aperture like those in the vid above. One point for each internal corner. :weird:

Also, aperture shape effects how the lens handles the transitions into the oof areas of the image. Smoother apertures create smoother transitions for a more 'buttery' look (so again, having lots of rounded blades tend to look best), whereas simpler lenses often tend towards harsher rendering qualities thanks to more cost efficient/crappy aperture design.
 
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