In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to create a custom bokeh adapter for your lens. The best part of this project is that almost all of the materials used to make it are available for only a few dollars. It’s cheap, efficient, and really handy!

Didn’t hear about Photo Premium? You can find out more here. It’s an additional, in-depth article, published each week just for our Premium subscribers (on top of all our regular free content!)

Beautify Your Bokeh

In today’s tutorial, we’ll be walking you through the process of creating your own fantastic custom bokeh adapter. But before we go any further, let’s just quickly clarify what bokeh is:

When you have a lens that is of ample quality to produce a relatively shallow depth-of-field, the background becomes extremely blurry when the foreground is in focus (and vice-versa).

Because of a whole lot of complex physics (aka. spherical aberration) and the way light is fed through the lens, out of focus points of light essentially take on the shape of your aperture.

In most cameras, this produces a round or near-round (sometimes slightly octagonal) shape representing the points of light in the distance.

Though the lens and aperture are distorting the true image, the result is something quite beautiful and is generally regarded as a positive feature of an image.

Source

Our custom adapter will be playing around with the shape of your aperture, to create a unique effect and alter the shape of those blurred points of light.

The Process

Here’s the general process that the Premium tutorial will follow:

1. List the required materials
2. Measuring and sketching all the elements
3. Cutting the elements
4. Gluing the elements and attaching the adapter
5. Sample images shot with the adapter

Watch the Preview Video

Here’s a quick preview of what to expect in the full video, available exclusively to Premium members:

Join Premium and Expand Your Photography Knowledge!

This is a really interesting technique to try yourself at home, and a simple way to make your bokeh look beautiful! This Premium tutorial will help you get started with ease.

For those unfamiliar, the family of Tuts+ sites runs a premium membership service. For $19 per month, you gain access to exclusive premium tutorials, screencasts, and freebies from Phototuts+, Nettuts+, Psdtuts+, Cgtuts+, Activetuts+, Aetuts+, Audiotuts+, and Vectortuts+! For the price of a pizza, you’ll learn from some of the best minds in the business.

Become a Premium member and download this tutorial today!

What Do You Want to See on Premium?

Is there a specific technical aspect of photography that you really want to learn more about? How about a very advanced technique that you could never quite grasp fully?

We really want to make our Premium content as relevant and useful to you as possible, so do send through your comments and requests to photo@tutsplus.com. Let us know what you want to see, and we’ll commission top-notch photographers to teach you!