#SOFT LENS BLUR HOW TO#
#SOFT LENS BLUR MANUAL#

#SOFT LENS BLUR HOW TO#

The other advantage is that you don’t need a large aperture, an aperture of f/6.3, for example, will give you creamy backgrounds.Ī longer focal length will appear to give you a shallower depth of field, because the subject is compressed, and the isolation between your subject and the background is more important.Have you ever wondered just how to create that perfectly blurred background in your photos? You know like the professional shots that have the subject of the image in super sharp focus, but everything else is a blur like you forgot to put your glasses on? The cool thing with longer focal length lenses, is that you can photograph portraits, wildlife, macro, and isolate anything you can’t get close to. If you cannot get close to your subject, but still want to isolate it with a background blur, then use a long focal length lens. The lens focal length changes the perceived depth of field That is because there is a huge distance between my camera and the subject I’m trying to photograph.

The bokeh really depends on that distance, because I can shoot a landscape scene with an aperture of f/1.8, and there will be no background blur. The shorter the distance between your subject and the camera, the shallower the depth of field will be. If you cannot afford a lens with a big aperture nor a macro lens, extension tubes are a good solution to extend your focusing distance. Standard lenses have a limit regarding their focussing distance.

Note that macro photographers use special lenses that enables them to take images really close to their subjects. Here I used an aperture of f/1.8 with the 50mm, and got as close as possible.Įven if you have an aperture of, let’s say f/5.6, if you get your camera really close to your subject, you will have a blurry background. The closer you get to your subject, the more blurred the background will be. This works with your camera the same as it down with you eyes. You will notice that the background won’t be blurred anymore. Now move your thumb farther away from your eye, keeping your thumb in focus. While focusing on your thumb, notice that you cannot clearly see the background. Let me show you my point: lift your right thumb (or left thumb -it doesn’t really matter) in front of your right eye and stare at it while closing your left eye. The camera to subject distance controls the depth of field But, there are other ways you can blur your background without having a wide aperture. With a big aperture, you will be sure to get a nice background blur. You probably know this already, but this is important to mention before giving the two other points. With a regular lens like 50mm, you will start getting nice bokeh starting from f/2.8. So lesson number one is to buy a lens with a really big aperture – this is the first way to achieve flattering background blur. You can find other lenses with an aperture of f/1.4 or f/1.2 but the bigger the aperture, the more expensive the lens. It is a relatively cheap lens to get started with portraits. I had to buy a lens with a bigger aperture to get a completely blurred background, and the Canon 50mm f/1.8 was the answer. I later understood that bokeh depended a lot on how big my aperture was – I wanted to get bokeh for portraits with a focal length of 50mm. After hours of trying to get a background blur with my aperture of f/3.5, I was left very frustrated because I did not get the results that I saw on the internet. However, they did not mention a lot of other factors to get this result, like how big should my aperture be.

#SOFT LENS BLUR MANUAL#

The user’s manual on my camera told me to just use the smallest f/stop on my lens and I would automatically blur the background.

The first thing I did not understand when I first started photography is that I used the biggest aperture on my lens but the background was not completely blurred.Īt that time I used the 18-55mm canon kit lens with its maximum aperture of f/3.5.

Soft lens blur