today I want to talk about how to get that swirly bokeh effect using some

pretty cheap lenses so maybe you've seen some pictures where

they have that nice swirly bulk in the background and you know those are facts

that you can do in Photoshop you know with some filters and things and how are

you can do it manually yourself by layering pictures and twisting them a

little bit but you know that's that's a ton of work and the end result i don't

think it's as natural as you know if you were to do it yourself up with one of

these cheap lenses there are lenses designed specifically for that poorly

bokeh effect for example I think lensbaby has one it's called the twist

60 and it's fine for you know nikon but it's like you know and canon

mount and have a sony mount then you can adapt it to micro four-thirds but

you know that's three hundred dollars and you know that there's another lens

called the petzval lens and that's that beautiful land made of all brass and and

you know it's got these neat little iris things that you drop in for

different kinds of bokeh effects, but that thing is like I think I saw it for

eight hundred dollars.

Anyway I'm not talking anywhere near that kind of money

what you want to look for are these little CCTV lenses they're mostly

prevailing on ebay i think amazon has them now too but I bought all of mine

from ebay and I you know this is a 25 millimeter f 1.4 ccTV lens and you

know the they're known otherwise the c mount lenses they you know so they come

with an adapter ring or you know i would highly recommend when you get these get

them together with the micro four-thirds adapter ring because its purely

academic what I read was these c-mount lenses came in different thread sizes

and different diameters on the other end here and if you don't get the c-mount

to micro four thirds lens mount together with lens mounts may not be able to use the

lenses that you have again is something i read on Wikipedia and it purely

academic.

I bought three of these lenses and all three of them fit on the same

amount so this one here is my 35 millimeter f 1.6.

I mentioned this 25 1.4 this is another 35 millimeter F 1.7 and

I don't recommend this one in particular i recommend getting this one

if you can find it and i'll put a link down below as if they're still available

take a look after i finish this video this this lens i really like and and i

use this ninety percent of the time and you know just to compare that to my 35

millimeter f 2 ziess over here just to give you some some perspective you

know the reason these lenses are so small is because they were designed for

an even smaller sensor than the micro four thirds.

So that's why i can get a really fast small prime you know and

mounted on here and and that's also the reason you get that swirly bokeh effect

because the circle of light that comes out of these is a little bit smaller

than the standard micro four thirds lens and that's that's because again it was

made for smaller sensor and what happens is as you go outside of that circle

light you start seeing all the defects you know chromatic aberrations and and

but that but that's what causes that swirly bulk effect of these

imperfections that you start to go outside of that circle light and that's

why you know these lenses are so big is because they're trying to design these

to be sharp corner to corner and you know for full frame sensor and

that's not what you want so that's why these are really kind of

neat because because these lenses would find for the CCTV cameras you know like

those ones you see in the banks looking at you and in parking garages look at

the monster this there's no requirement for that flange distance like you see on

this adapter here and once you mount this to your lens and I never like to

take it off I just don't like the idea you know this metal grinding and

twisting on here but once you mount it on here this is just like a native land

for the Micro Four Thirds system so you can buy a couple of them and never have

to change the lens months you can just put the lines on now for this one's i

also like it because i can put on the lens hood the coatings on these lenses

are just awful you're going to get flare and ghosting and and and all kinds of

things other than the swirly bokeh so if you could put it gets get the lens hood

for it sometimes they sell it with the lens

hood I've seen the whole kit lens hood included with the amount you know for

thirty-five dollars which is like out on this one but if you saw the intro to

this video and all my videos this is the lens i have mounted on the camera on my

tennis and as you can see i mean i think it's looks gorgeous on here and that's

that's not why use this one's a lot i like the 35 millimeter focal length and

you know the effective 70-millimeter for just night general shooting when I go

out walking in the park and stuff and it's also they're very fast so

this is this is a great length the next ones i would recommend is this twenty

five-millimeter half 1.4 CCTV Linus email i think this is a fujian but it

may have different names online i don't know it you know i'll put a link down to

the one that i bought this is like sixteen or twenty dollars and then if

you get it with the ring adapter might be like 25

the only problem with this lens you can't put a hood on it it has rings that

are written here but I think they're just ribs I don't think you can actually

put a foot on it so you know but it's so small I just put my hand over it like

this and that's not usually take care of any kind of flaring but I get the other

thing i did and I'll do a close-up over here a little piece of silver duct tape

right here kind of mark where the aperture areas so that's 1.4 and as I go

up you know goes as high as mine i guess and the focus ring is very simple just

near and far and it you know which is pretty much sums it up right

ok so that's that let me show you a couple of pictures from each of these

lenses and you know for 25 bucks i mean these costs less than some of the

filters i bought some other lens so what you know what one of the first pictures

I'm gonna show you i took is when i took with this lens here this is a the 25

millimeter f-14 and let's see take a look at this bust of George

Washington i took this at the George Washington masonic and inside so if

you're doing portraits you know you can see the center is very very sharp and

then as you go out towards the the background you start to get a very

subtle subtle sorely bokeh effect and to get that swirly bokeh effect you really

need to have more trees and twigs and you know you you really need a messy

background and that's when you kind of get the best effect you know messy

background like trees and leaves are really good because you get a little

little bit of light peeking through the leaves and then you got all that

business and it really makes a really nice effect if you look at the lensbaby

site you know they have some pictures there of their twist 60 lens and you

know they're much better photographer than i am but you know you always see

them you see the pictures would be hanging christmas like some things and

it really kind of accentuate that swirly bokeh and I you know I don't do things

like that but you know these either actual pictures so this next picture is

of a Model T Ford that I took at the national harbor and they had this thing

sitting out there and you know you really couldn't ask for more perfect

subject for this kind of land because this land is giving me kind of that

vintage old-school you know old camera kind of look naturally right and all I

could to this picture really is just apply a antique color you know happy or

something you know to kind of give it that that vintage look at the Fort Lee

book and everything else was just naturally straight out a camera through

this land another nice picture eyes but you know

that i like is this one here of a smokehouse and you can see kind of in

the background the trees are just slightly blurred and

this little hint of scoreless kind of going on so the effect with this lens is

a little more subtle than with this lens but again the center is just really it's

really tax sharp and I did some task comparing it directly this 35-millimeter

against my ziess 35 millimeter and in the center this is

virtually as sharp.

I mean you have the pixel peep like four hundred percent

to really see the difference between these two and and you know this one had

a little better contrast and at f/2 this lens is certainly sharper than this one

this lens here i have to get down to and I marked it with just a little Sharpie I

marked it but this ones i have to get down to about f 2.8 and then I still get

that swirly kind of soft bokeh background but you know the contrast and

the color really pops right around 2.8 this lens here

umm again it's not the same thing around after f 2.8 the contrast in the

color really start to pop but you still get that nice swirly background and I

just show you a couple more pictures real quick for example with this lens

the 35 millimeter here is like the normal shot on a this caterpillar i just

happened to catch while i was walking along and here's a kind of my final

image i cropped in tilted a little but you can see all the little individual

hairs a little strands of that I don't know punk rock kind of thing going on

with this caterpillar and I was just really amazed

with how sharp this lens is and you know the manual focus and everything but you

know you can focus peak and and just eyeballing zoom in right to get the best

sharpness focus peaking can be just a little awesome time and you know but

thats that's a whole nother video right ok one or two more i'm going to show you

one more that I did using a look like I use this lens again this line is I used

wide open at 1.6 for this picture and the reason i point this one out is if

you look closely at the boca it's almost got kind of a what they call a soap

bubble boca where you know the the light is kind of ring a little bit like that

bubble and that fast in effect that you really can only get from really old

vintage lenses and I seen much much better pictures and I take using you

know really amplifying effect i was a better photographer i could probably get

that using this land but this is what i could do but I i show you this picture

not so much for that that bubble bokeh effect but also because you know where

else you're going to get a fast time have 35 f 1.64 like $35 just let me

shoot this picture and I actually i use this tripod and set it down next to this

little flower thing with this lens and i was able to shoot like an iso 200 and

1.6 and it was very very dark there and it just wouldn't have been possible

without a nice that's prime like this so for thirty-five dollars you know you can

really i think expand your photography you know without

spending a fortune you can then let me show you one more

this is more of a wide landscape shot and using this lens and as you can see

the swirly bokeh do not so much in these kind of shots I probably stopped it down

it's hard to tell because it doesn't record any of the data I probably stop

sounding about f4 5.6 to get this shot but you know the color the clarity the

contrast everything is still really really good for such cheap land so you

know let's let's look at one more this one shot with again this lens and the

happiness for the thing I really love this land in this shot this is a from

the george mason of George Washington masonic from the steps and you can kind

of look down and see arlington down below are not on the alexandria virginia

and it almost had sort of a tilt-shift lens effect you know kind of looks makes

everything kind of look miniature when you when you could take a wide shot like

that so that's that's another reason i love this Lanza's is I'm getting sort of

a death to the to the picture that you wouldn't get normally when they're

trying to be sharp corner corner like most of the problems that you survived a

modern lineville and and you know I feel like for me it was is it just a pleasure

enjoy to use for my friend they kind of got sick of my swirly bokeh toy camera

look and and when I went out nice shot with like a normal 25 millimeter prime

they were like so happy to see like a normal picture but so you know you can

go crazy with it is all i'm saying is like the even if you're doing this

professionally you doing portraits or weddings

whatever we sprinkle a little bit of these swirly bokeh type affect them they

really pop I mean it really i think we'll add to your portfolio in a way

that you you wouldn't be able to get in other lenses and and then that's that's

that's the whole point of this is really I want to help you to kind of expand

your photography from you know just normal things that you see where people

are telling you buy the most expensive lens sick my god did you see did you see

that the i don't know i was looking at length from my nikon 1 of 5 millimeter

they want like 2 yeah that's that's not happening but

anyway uh one more quick one of the flower you know you can get up real

close similar to the caterpillar one I took that

one with the 25 millimeter and you can kind of see the swirly bokeh so again

this 25 millimeter has the best fully focus effect over this one but this one

you still got that effect but it's a little more subtle and it you know as

soon as i can use this foot i get a little more pop in the pictures with the

contrast and stuffing with this one you know if you're in a shaded area like

this other picture and you'll be fine or you like I said you just put your hands

so anyway up when you put these lenses on just one more tip is to go ahead and

program if you have a pen I for one pm-5 mark 2 or the new em1 you can program

the the exif data and to name these lenses as well as a tune the image

stabilization sorry about that to me and stabilization to work with the camera so

now you have an image stabilized you know 25 millimeter at 1.4 prime and i

have a video that i made before this one I'll put a link down below on how you

program in tune and adapt lens is to work with the pen a for any omd camera

practically ok that's it basically if you like this video i'll go ahead and

hit the like button down below let me know you guys are watching and I really

appreciate it i plan on making some more videos with some of my experiences

particularly the ones where you can save a few bucks and still get some pretty

neat things going on like I want to talk about this

the stupid strap in another video maybe but in any case go ahead and subscribe

if you want to see some more videos from me

let's get out there and shoot ok thank you for watching