gewtting the foreground blurred and the subject sharp

Joined: 05 Aug 2006 Posts: 8

Guys i was playing around with my aperture last night, and i could never get my subect or item sharp and the foreground in the frame blurred out. How do i get this look, i was told it was different aperture settings. but i went through all aperture settings. and still got a sharp photo, instead of just a sharp subject...this effect could be used for wildlife etc. depth of field etc....

Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 6:13 am

You want a wide aperture (low aperture value), and then focus on your subject in the distance.

Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 8:28 am

Try using an aperature like f/4 (or as small a number as you can, like f/1.8). Set your subject up so there is a bit of space between then and the background, if your subject is right next to the background it's going to be harder to blur it, so seperate the subject from the background a bit. Then seperate yourself from your subject a bit. Try that, it should give you a better result.

-cEc-

Premium Member Joined: 29 Oct 2004 Posts: 5758

Make sure you're manually focusing too.

When you're looking through the viewfinder remember that the aperture is wide open, so you're seeing the depth of field as shallow as it's going to get. So you should do your best to focus manually on your subject like that, especially if you're using a wide aperture and you don't have much room for error.

Joined: 27 Apr 2005 Posts: 577 Location: Rochester, NY

You could try using a longer focal length lens with your smaller aperture...

Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 1:03 pm

When you focus on a subject that is close, it is much easier to get background blur. In fact, if the subject is within macro focusing range (typically a foot or less with a 50 or 100mm lens), then you will find that even with apertures like f/32 you can still get background blur!! Hence the tiny apertures one uses with macro.

My suggestion is to sit near a chessboard and arrange the pieces at different distances, and play. Note that your camera doesn't have DOF preview so you will need to actually take pictures and then look at what you get.

:) keithwms

Joined: 27 Apr 2005 Posts: 577 Location: Rochester, NY

Download a depth of field calculator... Input different values and equations and it will give you an idea of what to expect...

Try this: http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 1:35 pm

Seems DOF is a very common question. There are lots of people that ask this regularly on the forum. I'd suggest doing a quick search. In the mean tine, I think this article explains it really well.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm

Joined: 18 Sep 2006 Posts: 59

thanks for the link, ciaranwhyte, it helped me understand a lot of what my aperture actually does =]