Christmas Bokeh - It's easier than you think!

What you will need to create beautiful bokeh christmas photos:

Christmas lights

A lens with a low aperture (I used Canon 50mm 1.8 for these shots)

Tripod (not necessary)

The last two images were shot at night in much lower lighting conditions. When shooting in low light your shutter speed will be significantly slower risking blur (in which case you should use a tripod to minimize camera shake).  In saying that I didn't get out the tripod for any of these.

The size of the bokeh will depend on a number of factors including how far the subject is from the lights and how close you are to the subject so experiment with different distances and get ready to take some beautiful images!

Below each image you will see the settings I used including Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO.

 f/1.8

1/500 sec

ISO 400

 f/1.8

1/125 sec

ISO 400

f/1.8

1/125 sec

ISO 400

For the following shots of just the lights set your lens to Manual Focus (instead of Auto Focus) and adjust the Focus Manually (usually by turning a Focus Ring on your lens) so the lights are out of focus and take the shot

f/1.8

1/250 sec

ISO 400

f/1.8

1/250 sec

ISO 400

 f/1.8

1/3 sec

2000 ISO

f/1.8

1/4 sec

ISO 1250