Bokeh and the 50mm lens

One of my favorite lenses to work with creatively is a 50mm. With the image above, I’m using a Nikon 50mm f/1.4 which creates wonderful circles, or bokeh in the out of focus points of light. A tip to using a 50mm lens is to get very close to your subject, and let the background fall into a soft blur. The farther away you are from the subject, the more likely that everything in the composition is in sharp focus, so get close! Using a wide aperture allows you to selectively focus on the subject, and paints the background in a soft romantic way using color and light, creating a beautiful story-telling image.  Have fun shooting! ~ Deb

4 Comments

  1. John Barclay on March 19, 2012 at 11:54 am

    Good tip and great image Deb.

  2. Deborah Sandidge on March 19, 2012 at 5:24 pm

    Great to hear from you John, and thank you for your wonderful comment!

  3. Gary on March 20, 2012 at 11:35 am

    Nice image Deb and thanks for the info.

    Another gear question: I just picked up a full-frame camera and am thinking about getting a circular fisheye lens. Since my backup body is the smaller sensor (1.6X crop factor), would you expect a difference in the fisheye image/effect when shooting the same subject with a full-frame sensor versus one with the smaller sensor?

  4. Deborah Sandidge on March 20, 2012 at 2:12 pm

    Hi Gary, Congrats on your new full frame camera! A circular fisheye should work just fine with that camera. However, on a smaller sensor format camera if I remember correctly -the images are not circular – the top and bottom of the circle is cropped off leaving round ends, rather strange. I would keep your circular fisheye for your full frame camera and use a fisheye (rectangular) designed to work with a smaller sensor size. Nikon would be 10.5. Hope that helps!

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