Fishie's Tutorials Series: Part 3

Following up the previous tutorial, today's tutorial is going to teach you how to get star-shaped bokeh! (Or heart-shaped and any other shape you want :)

You may have come across photos like this on the Internet and not know how to create this, because bokehs are usually round, pentagonal or hexagonal, depending on the lens and the aperture size. With only the lens itself, it is not possible to get these "customed-shaped bokehs". However, it is actually pretty easy to achieve all these shapes, without purchasing any "bokeh kit". :D You can simple make a DIY Bokeh Shaper! (I came out with this name HAHAHA)

Photos from last year because I haven't fixed my tree hehehe.

Taken with Canon 650D with 50mm f1.8. No edit.

First of all, you will need a lens with a large aperture. I'm using my 50mm f1.8 lens. It is important to use a large aperture to achieve this effect. I had tried using the normal kit lens, and instead of getting heart-shaped bokeh, I got more of a vignetting effect, which is not the desired outcome.

Next, you'll need the following materials:

• Black paper
• A pair of scissors
• Penknife
• Ruler
• Scotch tape
• Double-sided tape
• Compass (optional, but recommended! It makes drawing circles so much easier)
• Shape-punchers (optional. And I don't really know their name but they are the yellow & pink thingys)

Step 1:

Roughly measure the diameter of the widest part the lens. For my 50mm f1.8 lens, it is around 6.6 cm. Divide it by 2 to get the radius. Then, using the compass, draw a circle with a radius of 3.3cm on a piece of black paper. Cut it out using a pair of scissors.

Step 2:
Using the shape-puncher, punch a shape in the middle of the circular piece of paper. (You may need to fold the edge of the paper inward so that the shape-puncher can reach the middle of the paper.)
OR
Draw a shape in the middle of the paper and cut it out using penknife / scissors. Make sure to place some scrap papers under so you don't damage the table or the surface which you're working on!

Step 3:

Cut out a piece of rectangular paper by the dimensions of 25 cm x 4.3 cm. Make a small mark at the 21 cm spot. I obtained 21 cm by calculating the circumference of the circle, and rounding it up to the nearest whole number. For the 4.3 cm part, it is the height of the lens.

Step 4:

Roll the rectangle up into a cylinder. Secure the 2 ends together at the 21 cm mark using double-sided tape or scotch tape. This is the part which you will put onto your lens when taking the photo.

Step 5:
Attached the circular piece of paper to the cylinder you made just now. I used scotch tape, but you can use double-sided tape for a nicer finished look. :)

And there you have it! Your very own DIY Bokeh Shaper! Just set your lens to Manual Focus, place this over the lens, and you have bokeh in the shape you want!

For a quicker method, you can skip Step 3 to 5. Instead of putting the "hood" on the lens, you have to hold the circular piece of paper in front of your lens when taking the photo. It works as well!

And yeah, this is the end of the tutorial. I hope you have fun making this DIY Bokeh Shaper, and taking photos of bokeh in different shapes. :)

- Elsa

Fishie's Tutorials Series: Part 2

As Christmas is approaching, with everyone setting up their Christmas trees, these mandatory shots are coming back! And these shots are no other than the cliché yet beautiful "Christmas lights bokeh"!

Okay these aren't exactly bokeh-ish but yeah.

One of the most commonly seen photo is a collage of bokeh of the same object, but of different sizes. Now the question is, how do you take them?

First of all, you'll need a lens or camera that can focus manually.

Then, set it to Manual Focus. Turn your focus ring until you get the size of bokeh that you want!

Take 3 or more photos at the same spot 'cuz you do not want to have those photos having different angles.

For the collage, I usually use Diptic (on my iPhone. It's a paid app.) or Photoshop. Alternatively, you can also use any other apps that can make collages, such as PicsArt :)

Throw a filter over it, do some tweaks and TADA! You have THE Christmas tree bokeh collage!

You can also take photos of other things such as cityscape at night time.

CBD area at night

Taken with Canon 650D with 50mm f1.8, edited on Photoshop.

And yeah, that's the end of this simple tutorial. Happy bokeh-ing!

- Elsa Fishie :)

P.S. The Christmas tree isn't mine because I have yet to add in more stuffs onto my own tree :D

Fishie's Tutorials Series: Part 1

I have decided that for this December, I'll be doing some tutorials (in words and pictures...I have no idea how to do video tutorials hehehe ._.) on post-editing of photos or how to achieve a certain kind of effects when taking the photos. Basically, you will get an insight to how I take my photos and process them. I'll be posting shorter versions of the tutorials on Instagram, and as well as on here with more explanations and pictures.

For the first post in this series, I'll be talking about the camera and lenses I use and the apps or programmes I use for editing. This isn't really a "tutorial" but I feel like this is essential to mention :)

I use a Canon 650D or T4i (it is the same camera, with different names in different countries.) together with the 18-55 mm kit lens that came with the whole package, and a 50mm f1.8 lens.

On the left: Canon 650D with the 50mm f1.8 lens attached

On the right: 18-55mm lens

I practically have the 50mm lens on my camera all the time, because I'm a bokeh junkie and the large aperture of the lens produce some pretty good bokeh. Also, this lens is really good for portraits and close-up nature shots, which I absolutely adore. The large aperture also makes this lens really good in low light conditions. The shallow depth of field can also give landscape/cityscape photos a pretty interesting look as well. The 50mm f1.8 is really light compared to other lenses, and I think for its affordable price it is a really good lens. :)

However, as I'm using this lens on a cropped-sensor camera body, it is sometimes a bit too tight, or "zoomed-in". It is definitely not a lens to take group photos or landscape photos, unless you're standing really far away. And the auto-focus is really noisy, but I don't really mind that hehe :) Also, it is a prime lens and it lacks the range of focal length which makes it a bit inconvenient to use at times. But I definitely prefer the photos taken with this lens to the kit lens in terms of sharpness and colours.

That doesn't mean that the kit lens is worthless! It is my only zoom wide-angle lens, hence I use it all the time when I'm travelling. I wouldn't risk missing photographs, and hence I always have my kit lens attached on the camera body. With a zoom lens, I could take photos of a building really close to me and a building far away from me as well. Because even if the framing of the photo is bad, you could crop the photo when you reach home, if you took the photos with a wide-angle lens. I think this is a good enough lens for beginners or teenagers with no source of income (like me) :)

18-55 mm kit lens, aka the neglected lens.

I edit photos on my phone and on the computer. If I'm feeling lazy, or I want to put a specific filter over the photos, I'll edit the photos in iPhone apps. Below are the apps I use.

VSCO Cam is my favourite app when it comes to filters. It can give photos a really film-y and vintage look, especially iPhone photos. I adore the black & white filters on this app!

Another app that I frequently use is Afterlight. It has more filters, and it comes with textures as well. Finer adjustments to photos (such as colour balance) can be done on Afterlight. However, it is a paid app. But I think it's totally worth the money. :) Snapseed is another good app to edit photos in :)

I use Over and Phonto to put text on the photos. Over has some really cool artworks which you can add onto the photos. I downloaded Over when it was free, but some of the artwork packages only come with purchases. In Phonto, you can import your own fonts from the computer via iTunes.

I use Diptic for collages. It is a paid app, but it has many functions. PicsArt is a free app, and great for overlaying textures or images. However, it does not retain the original resolution of the photos.

For the more "major" and complicated edits, I do them on Photoshop CS3 on the computer. I got this for free as my mom's friend gave it to me. I use it for levitation edits, expansion, double exposures, major colour adjustments etc. As I'm still a beginner in Photoshop, there are a lot of functions and tools that I have yet to explore :) I used to edit my photos in Gimp, a free editing programme. If you don't have Photoshop and don't intend to buy one, I would recommend downloading Gimp. My friend uses it and apparently it is capable of doing expansions and double exposures too!

And yeah that's all for this post. I hope I haven't missed out anything...but I can't really think now as it is past 1 am here. So good night/day everyone! Stay tuned for the upcoming posts :)

- Elsa who's really tired now

The day we went "overseas": Around Pulau Ubin in 8 hours

(Well I tried being creative with the post title HAHA.)

Pulau Ubin is an offshore island, located in the northeast of mainland Singapore. Pulau is the Malay word for "island", and Pulau Ubin translates to "Granite Island" in English. It is the second largest offshore island, and the last "kampung" (village) in Singapore. It gives a laid-back and rustic feeling, and hence it is a great getaway from the hustle and bustle of the city life. Last Friday, my friends and I decided to explore the whole island on bicycles.

We arrived on Ubin by bumboats at around 10 am. It was a short 5/10 mins ride from Changi Point Ferry Terminal. As we were not feeling that adventurous, we rented bicycles at the Town centre, instead of exploring the island on foot. There are small restaurants selling seafood, many bicycle rental shops and some provision shops at the Town centre. Since my friends and I all brought lunch, we decided to make our way to the first stop: Chek Jawa.

Small wooden house (?) by the sea.

Taken with iPhone 5, edited on VSCO Cam.

Cycling through the lush tropical rainforest

Taken with iPhone 5, edited on VSCO Cam.

Snake-something weed. I forgot its name oops.

Canon 650D, 50mm f1.8, no edit.

Chek Jawa is a wetland where 6 different ecosystems can be found. However, we went at the wrong time. The tide was too high for us to see the sea creatures on the sandy ground. And oh I should say that the route to Chek Jawa was sooooo tough. It was full of rocky paths and upslopes. I could say that I spent at least half of the time pushing the bike hehe /inserts sheepish expression. At Chek Jawa Visitor Information Kiosk, we were greeted by some unusual "hosts".

Wild boar! I was so excited to see it because I have never seen one in real life!

She's coming out!!! I shall assume that it's a she :)

There's a whole family of them!!

Photos above are taken with Canon 650D and 50mm f1.8, no edit.

There are two trails at Chek Jawa, mangrove boardwalk and coastal boardwalk. There is a viewing tower at the mangrove boardwalk, and the view from the top was quite cool. We continued our journey to coastal boardwalk. The boardwalk was built along the coastline of Chek Jawa. It was nearing noon and the sun was blazing. The lighting was really harsh hence the badly taken photos :( We had lunch sitting under a shelter by the boardwalk, with the view of the sea and the sound of the waves crashing in. And not forgetting the gentle breeze blowing at us. Although the lunch might be simple, but it was definitely fun.

The special roots of the mangrove trees, adapted to the surrounding mud.

Can you spot the crabs? Some of them are quite well-hidden but their brightly coloured pincers gave it away!

Photos above are taken with Canon 650D and 50mm f1.8.

The coastal boardwalk.

Taken with iPhone 5.

A house built in the 1930s by the seaside was converted to the Visitor Centre. And it also has a private jetty (no longer in use) connected to it! Imagine living it that house!

When we left Chek Jawa, we saw the family of wild boars again! The younger boars were sleeping I think, and the adult boars were gently touching them with their snouts. It's a pity that I didn't see any baby wild boars, as the Internet says the baby wild boars have stripes on their back and they look like Bambi the deer!

We saw many abandoned quarries while cycling. Granite quarrying was carried out frequently in the 1960s, however the use of these quarries have been discontinued now. Due to the minerals and probably the ions, the "quarry lakes" are blue-ish green. It's potentially a good photo shoot location, if the weather was more cooling D: 

Panorama shot!

We cycled around for a while more, before coming to sigh that said "No entry except authorised vehicles". (I suppose we had reached Outward Bounds Singapore, which we can't go in. I remembered the path which we cycled on was the exact same path that I trekked on with a super heavy camping bag back in May this year hehe.) We decided to head back to the Town centre, then to the Sensory Trail.

On the Sensory Trail, there were many many plants with different scents, interesting uses and some of the plants that are found in dishes. My favourite plant in the small garden is still citronella, which is found in most mosquito repellent. I just think that the smell is really interesting! Its appearance is also similar to that of lemon grass.

Bokehhhh.

Fishy Plant!

Sometimes I just really love the sky before the storm...

Bumboats!

The view of the sea from the bumboat :)

So after spending around 8 hours on the island, we finally went back to mainland Singapore. Although it was hot and humid that day, and I got a couple of mosquito bites on my ankles and my hands (the only parts that weren't covered!!! Ubin mosquitoes are so vicious), it was really fun to cycle in the light drizzle! And it feels good to be away from the city life, even though it was for less than a day. As quoted from my friend, "C'était un jour inoubliable."

- Elsa

P.S. I'll try to update this blog more often! And I'm not sure is there's any error in this. I'm too lazy to check through :P