How To: Christmas Light Bokeh Photography Tutorial

I love photography and I love doing photos diaries on my blog, however, to mix it up today a bit, I thought I would do a tutorial that you can have a go at home! This effect is called  ' bokeh' a strange word I know, but it creates such a cool effect and is easy to do if you have the right kit at home. I hope you enjoy it and if you do try it, do send me your photos on twitter, I would love to see them!

You Will Need:

A glass jar

Fairy or Christmas lights

A 50mm prime lens 

Or a 250mm zoom lens 

camera

tripod 

a long distance ( if using 250mm)

There are two ways you can do this effect. One, using a 50mm prime lens, that can go down to a really low aperture of F1.6 or a 250mm zoom lens that can have a slightly bigger f-number, of between 3 and 5. The way I created the above picture was on a 250mm lens, so I will go through that in more depth in a second. However, if you do have a prime lens, to create this effect you need to be close to your glass. You will set up your glass, in the foreground which you focus on and then the lights in the background, but the distance does not have to be that far away because you are using a small f-number.

However, if you are using a 250mm zoom lens, you will need to position your camera ( on a tripod), the jar and the fairy lights in perfect line with each other. You should be far away from the lights with the glass in the middle. To create the best effect, you should put your camera on manual. The exact settings I used to create the photo above were; a shutter speed of 1/20s, an f-number of f/5.0 and ISO200. You can play around with the settings to see what works best for you. I also highly recommend you using a tripod, to avoid camera shake and also because you are using manual settings as well as a two-second timer.

There are lots of different ways to create this effect. I bet it looks really good with different coloured lights as well. You can try so many set-ups with lots of different objects in the foreground, as the main focus such as baubles or parts of the Christmas tree etc. If you are using a glass, trying rearranging the lights so it looks like they are coming out of the top of the jar. But always remember to ensure the glass is in perfect focus otherwise it ruins the shot! 

I hope you guys enjoyed this quick photography tutorial. I am sorry there aren't many Christmas themed posts on my blog this year but I really don't have the time to do any, so this is the closest you are going to get this year, apologies!  

Thank you for reading x 

Do you like trying different effects with your camera? Will you be trying this one?