Swirly bokeh and analog feel on digital camera (no filter needed)
As much as I love digital photography, at some point I always go back to analog world. There is something about film that makes it really difficult to make a bad photo. Even if it is underexposed, blurry and unfocused it has that artistic feel that basically allows you to wear a hat, nerdy glasses and call yourself an artist.
On the other hand, it feels like a heartbreak when you return from the lab to get your pictures developed only to find that your film is completely blank. Or that you did not load the film correctly and discover that after taking 36 shots.
In one of such darker moments I was wondering what is it that makes film photography so moody and appealing and how can we transfer that to digital. There is of course an unnegotiable flaw of digital pixels versus chemical grain. Apart from that, maybe old-school lenses have more of that imperfection that we are trying to fight in DSLRs that makes photography unpredictable — aberrations, flares, distortions, vignetting.
As a matter of fact one of my analog cameras has a detachable lenses- Helios 44M 58mm. After some googling, it turned out that this is actually one of the few lenses that create original swirly bokeh. I have never heard of it but it sounded like an interesting experiment!
Attaching analog lenses to DSLR was way easier than I thought. The only thing I had to do was to buy an M42 Canon EOS adapter for 4€ and it worked seemlessly with my Canon 6D.
It took some time getting used to not having autofocus, especially when shooting close ups on F2 aperture, but AF points flashing red when camera was focused were really helpful.
There is indeed something swirling and whirling about these pictures that makes them look different.
I must say that even though for me having a picture without any postprocessing is like going outside without wearing any makeup (impossible!) those are directly taken from the camera ! Not a single exposure or color setting was changed.
