Saturday, November 7, 2009

Bokeh Hoods

Playing with Bokeh Hoods today. I was quite inspired by the simplicity of the hood design provided by Canon in the recent Photo5 competition. Surely it must be easy to make a hood?
I use OmniGraffle on my Mac and set about making up some hood designs. I haven't put any card through the printer yet, just been using coloured paper. The effects are encouraging and I suspect that with card the effect will be fine. Easy to make too! I've saved six different hood designs as a pdf should you wish to try things out yourself.


You'll notice a couple of rings on each hood design. These are 80, 77 and 52 mm in diameter. My lens is 77mm so I cut down to the second ring and then fold over. I then user an elastic band to secure the hood in place. Haver a squiz at the image to the left.

I've been playing with different coloured paper, but think a stiff black paper or thin card would be better. However, for the purpose of showing you how the hood sits on the camera it's probably better than black.

Here's a few images I took using black bokeh hoods. Have a play and let me know how you get on.

Oh, it'd be a good idea to ensure you have a filter on your precious lens prior to playing with the bokeh hoods.

2 comments:

  1. Very impressive. Was there any post-processing involved on the photos in the link or are the resulting images entirely due to the effect of the 'Bokeh Hoods'?

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  2. No post processing. The vignetting you see is as a direct result of the use of the hood - quite pleasing I thought. No requirement for Photoshop, just a cheap bit of card!

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