What Equipment To Use For Bokeh Panoramas

GUIDE - EQUIPMENT

Lens

This is by far the most important aspect in making a bokeh panorama, so I will come back to this after talking about cameras.

Cameras

A DSLR, or an interchangeable lens compact (ILC) is a minimum requirement for this technique. Although all-in-one compacts are getting larger sensors and faster lenses all the time, they're still stuck with what a small general purpose zoom. We need a fast aperture, short-tele lens for this and that generally involves having the ability to change to a specific lens.

Sensor Size

A micro 4/3 sensor camera is OK for this technique, but APS-C cameras are better and full frame better still. A larger sensor will improve your workflow and reduce processing time, but technically it doesn't improve the effects potential. You're just more likely to run into the following issues with smaller sensors:

Missed moments due to exponentially increased time and effort needed
Increased chance of lacking overlap, resulting in stitching errors
Memory capacity, processing speed and boredom

It's not all doom and gloom in the small sensor camp however. On the plus side - smaller sensor cameras can be more compact, are usually cheaper and you'll most likely get a higher resolution result (because more images needed). You could also add a speed booster (usually for APS-C), which generally brings your camera up to the same level as a larger sensor version.

Medium Format (MF) cameras are not ideal for this technique. Apart from being very expensive their lenses are not as fast and this would actually handycap them for this technique, compared to a smaller, cheaper camera.

Lenses On A Budget?

Big aperture or pretty bokeh lenses tend to be expensive, so here are a few tricks on how to find some relative bargains for this technique. Firstly I recommend looking for manual focus lenses. New brands like Samyang or Mitakon offer great value for money and support most DSLRs (Digital Single Lens Reflex's).

Older manual focus lenses are also a great option, but check carefully as to whether your cameras lens mount can take them. Mirrorless has a big advantage because they can adapt cheaply to many of the old SLR mounts and this will be where the bargains are to be had. Sony is currently the best option of the mirrorless systems because they have the biggest support for other mounts (especially with autofocus), but also because they are the only one with a full frame option - the original A7 is also great value.

There are tons of great old manual lenses however. You can spend weeks looking through Ebay at: Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Canon etc. As well as cool Russian M42 mount lenses from Helios, Jupiter and many others.

Digital SLRs have a much more spotty support for old lenses. Although Canon EOS mount's short flange and wide mount give it great support for legacy glass (it can use Nikon F, Pentax K and M42 lenses, among others). Oddly the Canon EOS mount can't take their own legacy FD lenses without using extra optics or being expensively converted. This is a big shame because there are many awesome bargain FD lenses. Two of my favourite bokeh pano lenses are the 85/1.2L and the 135/2, although those aren't particularly great value.

Notes / Chart Key:

Chart Colours:
- Less Green = Their apertures are physically smaller
- Less Green = Wider focal lengths have more distortion / cause more stitching issues
- Less Green = Longer focal lengths require excessive numbers of shots and are big/heavy
The focal lengths sweet spot for this effect is: 85-135mm
Aperture size can be worked out by dividing the lenses angle by its aperture (eg. 85÷1.2 = 70.8)
The lens is the only thing that matters in this equation
Sensor sizes only effect how many images you need
Each Full Frame image is equivalent to roughly 3 taken from an APS-C camera, or nine from a M4/3 (with a 50% overlap), but these values go down a bit when comparing to multiple full frame stitches

Manual Pentax lenses can offer great value too. I used my father’s old Takumar (Pentax PK mount) 135mm f/2.5 lens to capture this image (above). Second hand prices for this on ebay are around £60 (less than $100). This lens can be used on new Pentax DSLRs or it can be adapted to Canon EOS Digital cameras or any mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses. I used it here on a Sony FE mount camera, the (APS-C) Sony E mount is exactly the same, as far as these older manual lenses are concerned. M4/3 is equally easy. These adapters can cost less than £10.

I have used all the above lenses to take bokeh panoramas. These are all prime lenses (fixed focal length / not zooms) with pretty large apertures. You can sometimes tell this from the size of the front element (you can with the ones above) but this doesn't always work. Physical aperture sizes are not stated in technical specifications. The f-stop value doesn't directly tell you the diameter of the aperture, but it is relative to the focal length, so you can work it out. To help with this I made the below chart. All the lenses on this chart are primes because they tend (99% of the time) to have larger apertures and thus are better for this technique.

Choosing A Lens

You'll want a fast prime lens for this technique, something with a focal length between 50-200mm. Anything outside this range will either be lacklustre, tricky to use, or both. For best results I'd narrow the range down to 85-135mm. A 50mm f/1.8 lens is a good place to start if you have one because it's small, light and easier to use on a smaller sensor.

The effectiveness of this technique is determined by the relative sharpness and shallow depth of field a lens is capable of at a set distance. Longer focal lengths have higher image quality, less aberrations, less distortion, perform better when focusing further away and generally have larger apertures. The down side can be cost, but the main issue is having to stitch more images to reach a desired result.