Take your best shot

To bokeh

By Adrian Toon, director of a2n.

A lot has been said about ‘bokeh’ (pronounced ‘BOH-kay’) in photography recently, so what is it and how is it achieved?

Let us first look at why it is such a big thing for smart phones. Smartphone cameras are small, very small, and while amazing for their size, their small aperture (small lens) and short focal length often puts almost all the image, near and far, into focus.

While this is a good attribute in many fields of photography, especially in architectural photography, it can detract from a main subject in portrait photography.

Bokeh is basically a burred background to a foreground subject such as a person or persons. Using normal cameras and lenses – a lens with a 70mm focal length and a wide aperture, f2.00 and larger – optimises what is known as a ‘small depth of field’ when focusing. This emphasises anything out of this field of focus, as unfocused. The result is an emphasis on the subject and not on the background.

Smartphone cameras achieve this by using two cameras to detect the subject and then by splitting the image into foreground subject and background. This then allows the background to be adjustable, often applying an emphasised digital blur. The result is a very well composed image and one that will make your PR images look amazing.

As always practice with this feature on your phone. As we all know practice makes perfect.