f/1.4      1/100 sec.      ISO-250      50mm

 

f/2.8       1/30 sec      ISO-800      50mm

I keep reading about “Holiday bokeh” and some of the examples are just the coolest shots ever.  Some people’s photos use the Christmas lights around to create stunning shots. So inspired by what I’d seen I got out the camera and played around with it a little. Actually I first cleaned some dried food off of it. Somehow there was cookie dough in random places.

f/2     1/80 sec.     ISO-800      50mm

Yeah, this isn’t exactly what “Their “ shots looked like.   This was done on manual focus.

 

I got out some lights to see what I would get.

 

I just put them a messy pile. Nope nothing fancy.

 

f/2.8       1/125 sec.     ISO-400      50mm

At 2.8 and my subject distance at 1m  I could still see the green wire of the lights.

 

f2.0      1/250 sec.   ISO-250      50mm

Next I opened it up a bit to 2.0 but I changed the shutter and ISO – I don’t know why but I did so it’s a little darker.

 

f/1.4      1/640 sec.     ISO-250     50mm

Here I opened it just as wide open as this lens will go and I see the hexagon edges are gone.

 

f/1.4     1/100 sec.    ISO-250     50mm

I don’t know why I ended up with oval circles in this one. Maybe it’s because I’m nearly on top of the pile of Christmas lights. That cookie is burnt. It was  perfect I didn’t have to worry about anyone stealing it.

 

f/1.4      1/320 sec. ISO-250 50mm

That’s all for now I’ve had a lot of fun with this experiment. I think you can get some kind of bokeh going on even with a lens that only opens to an f/4.  I need to think about how to get the light bubbles to not compete but compliment the picture.

The bad picture is the one you didn’t take.