The effect requires the subject to be withing 6-8' for it to work. Now the autofocus on my early Fuji cameras had this feature on by default.![]()
you may be able to get the affect on further subjects if you have a relatively low Aperture telephoto with a very long focal length. I've got an okayish 300mm telephoto with a min fstop around 4.7 (not great, but hey, it's what I got), and I've been able to measure that on the absolute narrowest depth of field, I can get it within a couple feet total. I've just never thought of trying to blow out the foreground.
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What determines if a bokeh looks natural or artificial?
A lot.
some things to look at, for example are the points of contact and lines where the background meets the in focus foreground. Is the line even, smooth, jaggged? does it roll over onto parts of the foreground? are parts of the background unblurred. Is there clean seperation of foreground and background and a sense of depth or does it look like everything is at the same depth, but just "blurred". do the lights and points of light have the right shape/size (Bokeh tends to cause lights to shape themselves and grow based on the lens in use.
I don't tend to shoot a lot of "bokeh" shots. I prefer landscapes, so I tend to keep all in focus, but here's two examples. One is real camera bokeh, and one is software that I did via layers. I bet after enough practice, any photographer, and anyone with critical eye, will be able to easily spot which one is which.
(and before anyone freaks out, yes. ALL my photos get post processed in some way, I always change the photo to match my memory, and not make my memory match the photo
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