Post your Christmas (bokeh) lights pics!

[DScience]

Nice! I like bokeh reflections that are on the table.

 

[Derrel]

CANON---Santa doll shot Dec 15, 2007 with Canon 70-200--I didn't like
the cat's eye effect caused by the rear element shroud
Canon has on many of its L-glass lenses. My little son
put this Santa doll on the couch near the coffee table so
that "the real Santa" would know where the cookies would
be placed on the night of his arrival a few days later.

NIKON---Shot 27 December, 2007. The background here
is made of up of minilights on the Christmas tree, at the
left, and some other mini-lights I set up as an indoor display
...I'm not keen on hours' worth of stringing up Christmas
lights outdoors, on a ladder with a staple gun in one
hand and a zillion bulbs on wire in the other hand.

 

[DScience]

Funny thing is I just came back from experimenting with bokeh christmas lights and then saw this.

What lens did you use in your original post Dscience? My 18-70 cant get good bokeh lights for ****.

It was shot with my 105mm f/1.8. It was in front of a store, they had lights in the window, with this lil tree outside.

what I would suggest is to just set your aperture wide open, change cam to manual focus, and then just shoot your Xmas lighhts out of focus. This will just give you the feel of it.

 

[DScience]

I posted one of these already this morning, but since you made a themed thread...

This is what sparked the idea to start a dedicated thread. At first I was going to make it a 'general' Christmas one, but I figured having the bokeh topic would make it more interesting.

 

[DScience]

CANON---Santa doll shot Dec 15, 2007 with Canon 70-200--I didn't like
the cat's eye effect caused by the rear element shroud
Canon has on many of its L-glass lenses. My little son
put this Santa doll on the couch near the coffee table so
that "the real Santa" would know where the cookies would
be placed on the night of his arrival a few days later.

Derrel, so it's certain lens elements that cause the so-called 'cats eye' bokeh? The imperfect circles that resemble a cat's retina?

I have wondered about this! But since I have seen it with all my lenses, I thought it was a matter of distortion caused by the emitted light being off center from the focus point. My thinking was that only the light being focused on was coming into the lens at a straight line, hence the perfect circle from the wide open aperture. Then I thought that the 'cat eye' ones were caused because the light is being bent somewhat or refracted, and thus you get an imperfect circle.

Please explain, this is something that's bugged me.

 

[Derrel]

No, in this particular case, the case of the 70-200 f/2.8 L-IS, the lens is wide-open at f/2.8 and the cat's eye effect is caused by *mechanical vignetting* at the rear of the lens. For some reason, the rear of the lens, right near the lens mount, on many Canon lenses has a squared-off shape. That squared off shape often,and I mean often, leads to the cat's eye effect. The Sigma 30mm f/1.4 HSM lens also suffers from mechanical vignetting, due to a lens design 'decision'. In the Santa shot, the lens aperture,inside the lens, is 100 percent, totally round: the cat's eye effect is caused at the back of the lens itself.

On older lenses, delivering a perfectly round, perfectly-evenly illuminated, rounded OOF highlight was not so much of a concern as it is on the higher-end Nikkor lenses designed since around 2001 and to the present day. "Bokeh" outside of Japan caught on only beginning in 1996,and it took five years before many people had ever heard of it.

Maybe I'll snap a photo of the rear of the 70-200 2.8-L IS and illustrate what is causing the cat's eye effect. BTW, I see this effect a lot; the other day,there was a shot of a US Senator on the front page of the Huffington Post website,and I immediately knew it was shot with a Canon telephoto, since it had this same bokeh signature, as it is called. EDIT--Here is a quick snap showing the rear, square-ish lens body structure that causes the cat's eye effect on the Canon 70-200 2.8 L http://www.pbase.com/derrel/image/120099765

 

[nateMN]

My man Stanley the penguin.

A Christmas smoker my parents got me from Germany.

 

[y0aimee]

Nice! I like bokeh reflections that are on the table.

actually, this shot was taken on the floor. i was laying on my stomach and manually focusing my 50mm which helped me get that shot, and also a bad neck cramp. LOL

 

[Atlas77]

Funny thing is I just came back from experimenting with bokeh christmas lights and then saw this.

What lens did you use in your original post Dscience? My 18-70 cant get good bokeh lights for ****.

It was shot with my 105mm f/1.8. It was in front of a store, they had lights in the window, with this lil tree outside.

what I would suggest is to just set your aperture wide open, change cam to manual focus, and then just shoot your Xmas lighhts out of focus. This will just give you the feel of it.

Waaaaayyyy Ahead of you I already did that tonight, Its a good feeling to get bokeh, man I wish I had the cash for a 50mm 1.8.

One day, and I guessed you took that with your 105, man you must love that lens.

 

[inTempus]

I guess it's unavoidable... even a simple Christmas lights thread is turned into a Canon vs. Nikon discussion.

I don't believe the effect you're seeing is either the result of the rear element of the lens, nor is it unique to Canon lenses.

First, here's a shot taken a few moments ago with my 50mm f/1.2L lens for this discussion. The 50mm does not share the same rear element design as the 70-200 f/2.8L.

Here's the rear of the 50m lens:

A quick search on Flickr shows that several Nikon lenses and bodies also exhibit this effect.

A D300:
I will shine on on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Another D300:
Wage & The Holga Filter on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

A D90:
Merry Christmas on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

And a D200:
a new season on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Ironically, you can also see the effect occurring a little bit in DScience's original post as well.

So it would appear that it's not something unique to Canon. I am curious as to what actually causes the effect, but that's probably a discussion for another thread.

 

[inTempus]

Derrel, so it's certain lens elements that cause the so-called 'cats eye' bokeh? The imperfect circles that resemble a cat's retina?

I have wondered about this! But since I have seen it with all my lenses, I thought it was a matter of distortion caused by the emitted light being off center from the focus point. My thinking was that only the light being focused on was coming into the lens at a straight line, hence the perfect circle from the wide open aperture. Then I thought that the 'cat eye' ones were caused because the light is being bent somewhat or refracted, and thus you get an imperfect circle.

Please explain, this is something that's bugged me.

I think you're probably pretty close. I suspect it has to do with the angle the light is coming into the lens, the distance from the camera to the subject, and other factors. But I honestly don't know.

What I do know is that since you're seeing it with your Nikon gear and I've found similar images on flickr taken by Nikon's... and the fact my 50mm does it in some cases and it doesn't share the same design as the 70-200, that it's not a Canon only phenomenon and it's not due to the square opening on the 70-200.

We could probably figure it out through experimentation... or some serious Google-Fu.

 

[inTempus]

Oh, and here's my submission for the thread.

 

[FrankLamont]

I hate to be the technical Gringe, but here we go...

'Good' bokeh means out of focus points of light that aren't distracting; instead, they're rounded (tick) and soft, meaning they tend to blur into each other (... perhaps not).

Ask for examples of bad bokeh, then.

 

[Derrel]

This is the original, single-element Lensbaby, shot on Christmas Day around 5:30 in the afternoon, when my son was playing with his new wooden Thomas the train track set.

Lensbaby with f/2.8 aperture, 1/10 second at ISO 100. Nikon D2x. Notice how large and unusual the out of focus specular highlights are from the Lensbaby 50mm lens.

 

[o hey tyler]

Forgot about dis one...