The reason I bought the 50mm f/1.8 also known as the nifty fifty was because, as an amateur, I want to achieve bokeh on my photos.

But what is bokeh. It is a Japanese term for the subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image projected by a camera lens. If you notice that any shiny item on the background, once taken out of focus, becomes a little dot of light? That’s a scientific phenomena and it’s always a circle dot. Cool huh?

The above photo was not taken with my 50mm. I took this using my kit lens. Below is a simple bokeh tutorial.

So how do you achieve the bokeh effect on your pictures with a kit lens?

1. Make sure your subject is very near.
2. Make your background very far.
3. Zoom in (more than 50mm).
4. Use a big aperture (reason why the nifty fifty does it great. aperture is f/1.8 Note: the lower the number, the bigger the aperture. f/1.8 is a bigger aperture than f/2.0)

Try it!