The ratio between the focal length and the aperture (diameter) of a lens is called the f/number. The smaller the f/number, the more light is let in. Fast lenses start around f/2.0, and the light let in goes as the inverse square. Compared to f/2.0, f /1.4 lets in twice as much light, f/1.0 four times, and f/0.71 eight times. The fastest camera lenses designed for DSLRs and widely available are between f/1.4 and f/1.2, but lenses as fast as f/0.75 have been made in quantity for special applications, and some of those are available quite cheaply via scrap yards, surplus stores, or eBay.

These ultra-fast lenses usually are branded either Kowa or Rodenstock and were designed for use in medical or semiconductor industry equipment, etc. They are not well-suited for use on DSLR cameras, and are no substitute for an f/1.4 or f/1.2 lens that was designed for your camera. However, they easily can produce very distinctive images. Here’s how to use one on a DSLR.
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It’s not just photography enthusiasts that like to play with bokeh — check out this short clip from the new movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Pay careful attention to the bokeh whizzing by in the background outside the bus. The look is so subtle that most people probably wouldn’t even notice it.

To learn how to do this yourself, check out the “Create Your Own Bokeh” tutorial over at DIYPhotography.

(via DIYPhotography)

Here’s a stop-motion music video created by Ian Robertson for a song titled Lyrical Spread by The Chameleon. Robertson uses stop-motion to display the lyrics of the song in a pretty unique way — as jam being spread over bread.

It was created using a Canon 350D, a label printer, hundreds of individual photos, and a healthy dose of patience and creativity.

The above is a promotional video for the Summadayze 2011 music festival done in stop-motion. It was created by Tom Blachford, a 22-year-old self-taught photographer based in Melbourne, Australia.

15 hours of photography were required to shoot the 1,000 frames that went into the final video, and there were no special effects added in digitally. This means all the illustrations seen in the background were painstakingly drawn by hand as the photography was being done. Wow.

Update: Tom tells us that the stills were shot using a Nikon D300s and two 600 watt strobes.

Here’s an amazingly awesome idea for business cards if you’re a photographer or photo enthusiast. Brooklyn-based photographer and designer Steph Goralnick created the above business card by hand, embedding some film between two layers of heavy stock. The resulting business card looks like 35mm slide film, except the film used was a negative.

(via Photojojo)

“Running on Empty” by Ross Ching is a neat time-lapse video inspired by Matt Logue’s empty L.A. project, which we featured last year. Rather than individual photographs in which ordinarily busy LA streets are artificially devoid of any cars and people, the video takes it a step further by stringing together such photographs to create an eerie (yet soothing and beautiful) glimpse into an LA in which streetlights blink above “I am Legend”-esque roads. I wonder how long post-processing took…

“NES Stop Motion” is an amazing stop motion video by YouTube user bornforthis43 that took over 120 hours to produce. Each scene was created using paper and ordinary household objects, and over 7,000 photographs went into making this 3 minute long stop-motion video. The result is a video that should deliver a healthy dose of nostalgia to people who enjoyed gaming on the NES back in the 80s and 90s.