How do you get the "blurred background" effect?

[keller]

Have you see photos where the main subject is clear, but the background is completely blurred? I've seen this for long backgrounds (ie. someone standing in front of a mountain), and small backgrounds (a watch in front of a computer, with the computer blurred).

I read in a photography book you need to focus on the subject. I tried this, but it didn't seem to work.

Anyone have any advice about this?


(If it helps, I've got a digital camera, point-and-click, but with manual settings)

 

[Smith2688]

It's easiest with a larger format camera (a full-frame or APS sized DSLR or a 35mm camera). The effect, however, can be achieved using a digital P&S.

Choose the center AF option, use the largest f-stop possible (smallest number) given the available light, focus on your subject and recompose the frame, then finally fully depress the shutter.

This was taken with an Fz20 (relatively P&S digital camera) using the process explained above.

 

[darin3200]

It will also depend on the type of lens you have. For instance, lenses with more magnification blur more back ground, while wide-angle lenses have a lot of the stuff in focus.

Also, the closer the subject you focus on is, the more blurry the background will be. If you subject is 10 feet away from you, and the background is 30 feet, the background won't be as blurry as if the subject was 5 feet away.

However, I just relized you have a point and shoot. You can leave the subject in focus on a photo editing program and then blur the background, or even make the things closer to the subject less blurry and the things farther away more blurry

 

[PeterDennis]

If you have a point & shoot your limited to how much you can do. I use a point & shoot on my bike trips and if yours is like mine it has a portrait mode on the dial. This usually will automatically select a wide apeture and if you also zoom the lens out to a longer focal length ( zoom in on subject ) you might be able to get the result your looking for. Try that.

 

[keller]

Hey thanks for the tips everyone, after some trial and error I finally managed to do it

Although for some reason, it doesn't seem to work well for objects in longer ranges (ie. trying to focus on a bush 2 metres in front of me, with a background of trees about 100 metres away). Is this because of my P&S camera limitations, or simply because the distance is too much?

 

[Meysha]

It's just your P&S camera limitations. It always tries to make everything in focus.

You'd need to get a camera with some manual settings so that you can set the aperture (f number) yourself. You'd want a large aperture (a small f number like 3.5, or 4 for example).

 

[keller]

Oh wow, I feel kinda stupid. I was confusing the autofocus with the light metre, thus the reason it wasnt working. Now that I've got it to manual focus, hopefully it will work out better :S