Freelensing, heart shaped bokeh, and circle bokeh

I spent one whole evening playing with freelensing and shaped bokeh like crazy! Here are examples of each techinque I tried with my camera that night. 

Ok, here is the first shot. This was taken in my darkly lit living room at 1/60 shutter speed, 640 iso, and a 1.8 aperture with the 85mm lens.

No special techniques here.

This shot was taken with exactly the same settings, but I had covered the lens with a black paper and small hole cut in the shape of a heart directly in the middle of the lens. Wanna learn how to do this too? Click here for a step by step tutorial. It's very simple and free to make.

Don't have black construction paper? Do what I did and find an old magazine cover that was dark in color. It is EXTREMELY important that the heart is in the middle and very nicely shaped. If not, you will just get weird shaped bokeh. The easiest way to do this is to cut the circle shape out of the paper to cover the lens, then fold it in half and cut out your half heart along the crease (you remember how to make heart valetines right?)

For this shot, all the settings were the same again, but I was NOT using my heart cover and instead tried the technique of freelensing. This is where you actually detach the lens from the camera holding it near the body, and taking a picture. The result allows certain objects to be in focus while something right next to it can be blurry.

It does require a lot of practice, but it is a nice alternative to purchasing a 1,500 dollar tilt shift lens. I am tempted to post a video tutorial on this technique. Would you be interested? 

Let me know if any of you guys try one of these! I would love to see everyone else's results! Have an awesome Friday!

 

Comments

[Meredith]

I love both techniques! Thanks for sharing. I definitely want to try this out myself.

[Steven Andrew]

I've wanted to try Bokeh for SO long but I need a different lens! :\ Once I get the lens I'll definitely try it out, though! :)
I LOVE the way yours came out!

[BlythePonytailParades]

Steven- I'm sure you can do this with your stock lens. If you want to try it out, throw your camera on M and manually focus your image. Just take a picture of christmas lights turning the ring out of focus. Once you know all your manual settings, even with a 3.5 aperture stock lens, you will get bokeh :)

[Anna Z]

I would watch a video for sure! I tried free lensing a little and had some trouble. But I'm sure it just takes trial and error.