Lenses
Your lens is by far the most important aspect of this technique and the most important aspect of the lens is...
Entrance Pupil
Your lenses' entrance pupil is the key metric to the success of this technique. The larger it is, the more subject isolation you will have at any given distance. What is the "Entrance Pupil"?; It refers to the diameter of the opening, between the aperture blades, as it appears through (and magnified by) the front elements of the lens (Gerald Undone has a great video about it here). The diagrams below show the best lenses to use for the technique, in two different ways. Both the can and circles are to scale.
Calculation
The entrance pupil of a lens can be worked out by dividing its focal length by its f-stop (see above). NOTE: The focal length is the distance from the sensor to the point of convergence (nodal point), which is pretty much where the entrance pupil is. The ‘f-stop’ value is simply a fraction of the focal length that describes the measurement of the entrance pupil. Thus, a 50mm f/1.0 has a focal length of 50mm and an entrance pupil of 50mm (50 divided by 1).
Lens Chart
This next chart illustrates a balance between potential effect and workflow complexity, by comparing each lenses’ entrance pupil to its focal length when using the technique.
Understanding The Chart
Here are some tips on how to read the above chart.
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Finding a lens - First look for a focal length (top bar), follow the dotted line down to where it intersects the coloured line of the f-stop value for its maximum aperture.
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Coloured lines - This illustrates a lenses' potential for the technique (green = great, red = not so great). The lines connect all the maximum aperture values of various prime lenses.
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Pure Potential - Follow the black dot of your chosen lens to the left to determine the size of its entrance pupil. This is a good metric, but does not take difficulty into account like the coloured lines do.
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Number of images - To see how many images your lens will require to create a roughly 28mm (full frame equivalent angle of view) from your resulting stitched panorama; follow the dotted line straight down...
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Frame Size - You’ll find values at the bottom for each sensor size (used to shoot the panorama). This illustrates how larger sensors improve workflow by reducing the number of required images.
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Weight - Lens weight is not strictly taken into account on this chart (see below). However, lenses that are higher up and further right tend to be heavier.
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Best lenses - Apex lenses can be found in the chart, where the line is more green (higher & further left). My recommendations can be found below.
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Price - Although I could not find a way to include price into this chart (it’s complicated enough already), prices are included on the lens recommendations below.
NOTE: The above chart is based around emulating a wide (28mm) lens, which is what I feel makes this technique so impressive. However, if you are happy to emulate longer focal lengths, this changes things a bit. For example; Taking nine images from 200mm f/2.0 will emulate a 100mm f/1.0 which will provide pretty epic results.
Potential
This next graph shows a list of lenses, ordered by the size of their entrance pupil. It starts with the classic 50mm because it’s a lens many photographers will already have. It’s also an incredibly versatile and budget option (whether you’re using a full frame or APS-C crop sensor), so represents a reasonably priced point of entry to the technique if you don’t already own any other suitable lens.
NOTE: All of the charts on this page retain the same lens order, to better compare their pros and cons (further right = larger entrance pupil).
Weight
This chart shows how the lense’s weight increases as the size of the entrance pupil gets bigger. Hopefully this helps to illustrate where the sweet spot is for how much weight you wish to carry.
NOTE: The broken lines at the top of each bar illustrate a range of weights for various lenses with the same focal length and aperture.
Large, heavy telephoto lenses will require exponentially more images to get to the same wide angle results. This makes them unsuitable (but not impossible) for hand held use.
Workflow
This chart shows the the amount of images required (to reach a wide angle result) for each of the lenses. Wide FoV’s are where the technique looks most different and special. This demonstrates how much more work will be involved when using longer focal length lenses.
NOTE: The vertical values on this chart are for a full frame camera. If shooting on an APS-C then multiply these values by roughly x2.25 and x4.5 for a M4/3 camera (these figures are based on a precise 50% overlap between frames).
Apex Lenses
In my opinion, these are THE best lenses for Bokeh Panos. They have the biggest entrance pupil for the shortest focal length and lowest weight. Elements like; image quality, mechanical vignetting and chromatic aberrations are also considered. Cost is considered a little, but autofocus is not, since it will be locked during shooting anyway.
[96] - Sigma AF 135mm f/1.4 - 1420g / $2,000 [FE, L] (2025)
Heavy, but extreme for its focal length and almost zero aberrations.
[75] - Nikkor AF 105mm f/1.4 - 1120g / $1,760 [F] (2016)
A mirrorless version of this lens will be great one day. Until then, this ain't bad.
[75] - Samyang AF 135mm f/1.8 - 772g / $800 [FE] (2022)
The lightest & cheapest large aperture, extreme IQ, AF lens.
[71] - Canon FD 85mm f/1.2 - 800g / $700 [FD] (1980)
Rather imbalanced on mirrorless, but a MF gem with a magical rendering.
[63] - Sirui AF 75mm f/1.2 - 450g / $320 [FE, X] (2024)
The lightest & cheapest large aperture APS-C AF lens (113mm f/1.8 equivalent).
= Entrance Pupil
= Manufacturer
= Focal Length
= Max Aperture
= Weight (mirrorless)
= Cost (typical)
= Mount Type
= Launch Year
Key
[71]
Canon
85mm
f/1.2
800g
$700
[FD]
(1980)
Cameras
Since you need a dedicated lens for this technique, an interchangeable lens camera (ILC) is a minimum requirement. The bokeh pano image below shows how sensor sizes (and even film) compare to the potential you get from this technique. It emulates larger sensors and impossibly large apertures at the same time. The only way you can get close to this in a single image is with large format and old military lenses, which would weight a ton. This image also shows roughly how many frames you would need to cover this size when using the different sensors.
Sensor Size
A full frame sensor is the best choice due to the available lenses. Although using the same lens on a smaller sensor camera technically has the same potential, it would require you to shoot more images to reach the same result (2.25x as many images for APS-C and 4.5x for M4/3). Here are a few pros and cons to using smaller than full frame sensor cameras for this technique:
Pros
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Higher quality parts of the optics (sharper images)
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Less aberrations (CA, vignetting & mechanical vignetting)
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Higher resolution (generally)
Cons
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Missed moments & dwindling interest - due to exponentially time consuming workflow
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Increased overlap issues - resulting in a failed stitch and/or stitching errors
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Memory issues - camera buffer & computer RAM running out
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Processing - workflow speed
Larger than full frame (Medium Format) cameras are not ideal for this technique either, due to their lenses having smaller entrance pupils. You can adapt some full frame lenses to medium format cameras (eg. Fuji GFX, Hasselblad X) and have them project over the whole sensor. This looks great for single images, but would not be ideal for this technique due to poor corner performance.
