Backround Blur or Bokeh in Photos
Portrait Photography in Wynyard Teesside today with my other half, enjoying a stroll in the woods with the dog and a quick opportunity to test one of our latest lens additions. The Canon EF 85mm 1.8 is a prime lens designed to give the lovely creamy backgrounds you see in many professional photographers portfolios and is something we will be using for stylish and creative photography during weddings along with our other prime lenses, we use a mixture of primes and zooms at the moment depending on the situations, prime lenses however for me still give the best results, they just take a little more thinking about which is a good thing !
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| Canon 5Dmk2 + Canon 85mm 1.8 @ f2 with Off camera Flash |
For the arty looking blurred backgrounds lenses which have an aperture between F1.2 and F2.8 are normally used , these can be zooms which means the photographer can zoom in and out of the shot from a standing position or primes which generally allow more blur in the background, but with primes the photographer zooms by walking as the lens is one set length !
The blur in the background is often referred to as 'Bokeh' by photographers and many lust after particular lenses purely for this attribute.
This shot was taken using off camera flash in manual mode which is the preferred method for this sort of shooting, it takes a little more time but is certainly worth it for this sort of shot.
For those couples reading this about to get married consider your photographers skill and equipment when booking them and although it does not matter particularly which make or lenses they use, the equipment they use will to some extent dictate the results of their work and their own unique look.
Andrew Davies
