3 Love bokeh!

Make your own aperture shapes

Inside every lens is a diaphragm ring that opens or closes as you adjust the aperture value. Its chief function is to let more or less light through to the sensor to give you a well-exposed picture, but a by-product of this is the way it affects the zone of sharp focus in the image. If the aperture is closed down to its narrowest setting (like f/22), a very deep zone of sharpness is produced; if it’s wide open (the lowest f/number), a shallow depth of field is the result.

The quality of the out-of-focus areas is referred to as ‘bokeh’ (a Japanese word that roughly translates as fuzziness); on pinpoints of light, this will reveal the shape of the ‘hole’ in the diaphragm ring. It’s normally as close to a circle as possible – but it doesn’t have to be!

If you open your aperture to its smallest f/ number available, you can make a hole in a piece of card; then, once it’s placed over the lens, you can render pinpoints of light in any bokeh shape you like. We wanted to display our love of coffee with a simple heart shape, but the options are only limited by what you can cut out with scissors or a scalpel.