HELLP!! HeLp!!!

nadinesm82 · Oct 4, 2011

HI

I have a cooking blog and I want to take really nice pictures of my dishes. My camera does take nice pictures as it has macro setting but what I'm looking for is to take pictures with blurred background as I see in other sites. I'm a beginner in this. I have a DSC-H2 cyber shot Sony camera. I want to know what lens do I buy to be able to do this. I read somewhere That I can not buy a lens for this kind of camera.Is that true??
Is there a way in my camera to to do this effect I turned the macro on , it gets nice close up pics but I can not blur the background and keep the dish I want clean and crisp , I hope You understand what I mean as I'm a beginner in this and don't know the technical words for what I'm saying.
One more thing In case there is no way to do this and I can not attach a lens to my camera, What suggestions you have for an affordable camera and an affordable lens that achieves what I want.

Thank for you help
Please keep in my mind when replying I'm a beginner so please no technical words

Overread · Oct 4, 2011

What you are after might be very tricky to almost impossible for your camera to achieve. The effect you are after is linked to not only the lens on the camera itself, but also to the camera sensor inside the camera, whereby the bigger the sensor the easier it is to get smaller depths of field (areas in focus) and thus easier to send backgrounds out of focus and into blurring.

In addition you are right in that your camera has a fixed lens and that there are not really very many options to adjust the lens that comes with it; there are some teleconverter/telephoto adaptors on the market but a great many just degrade the image quality that you get.

You might try the following suggestions:
1) Shoot with the lens at its longest focal length, that means zoomed all the way in. The further you are from your subject the more the background will blurr out.

2) If your camera has this mode - check the manual - go into manual mode and set the aperture value to the smallest number possible (called the widest aperture). That reduces the depth of the photo that is in focus, and thus increases background blurring.

If neither of those methods works you'll have to consider working within the limitations, maybe by using a single colour background (so that its got no distracting details).

As another point but if you are looking at some more professional food photography it should be noted that a lot of professional food photography work isn't done with properly cooked food. Many times food for photos will be fake or added to with colourings (ie kind of like food make-up) in order to present something that captures well on the camera.

CCericola · Oct 4, 2011

I think the H2 has a aperture priority. Set your dishes in a nice bright area or even outside away from any walls or backgrounds. Set the camera to aperture priority and choose the lowest F number. (3.5 I think is the lowest). To get that nice blurry background you want a low number aperture, move back so you can zoom all the way in and have it far away from any background. That should help you.

DiskoJoe · Oct 5, 2011

get a sony alpha 200 or 300 and a minolta 50mm f1.7. probably about $400 total now a days.

kojack · Oct 6, 2011

I second disco Joe. The minolta 50 mm is a sweet peice for less that a Benjamin or an Elizabeth depending where you live. The 1.7 is sharp wide open but the 1.4 has to be stepped down to sharpen up.