DIY Bokeh filters

Any photos which are pretty and have an essence of Magic, are always ones I find interesting; in particular images with out of focus lights and different shaped bokeh effects. As an addict to Pinterest, I was keen to seek a way that I could achieve my own Bokeh images. Surprisingly, It is very easy to achieve such an effect, all you will need: card, little scissors and a camera.

Firstly, draw around your lens and then cut it out; you may need to cut to size if it doesn't fit snugly inside the front of the lens. Then draw a small shape, no bigger then 1.5cm in diameter, and then cut it out. Now you've made a DIY filter, it depends on how your camera works to how you go about achieving out-of-focus shots. I personally use a Pentacon auto 1.8/50 lens on my Panasonic G2 camera body, using a manual lens allows you to achieve out of focus shots very easily but as long as you have a low aperture, consequently having a short depth of field, a large proportion of the image should produce a blurry, bokeh effect. You may need to play around with shutter speed, manual and aperture settings in order to achieve the effect you want. When you have configured your settings, try different shapes for the filter and foregrounds, to create some interesting images. I would recommend using christmas lights or the keyboard lights on a macbook as a starting point. I hope this post has been helpful, I certainly enjoyed learning and experimenting with this technique. Here are a few images which I created.