Help with Nikon camera

kathy65 · Jul 15, 2015

I am trying to learn my camera, Nikon Coolpix L620, and I am frustrated and looking for ideas. I am basically teaching myself photography so I am a beginner.
I want to take some photos of my daughter in law (maternity), and be able to use the Bokeh effect on them. Problem is, this model will not let you change any aperture. I tried the Macro and Portrait setting, being close to object and background a distance away. Still nothing.

Any ideas how achieve this with the camera I have?

Also, can someone explain to me what image mode does? I have different settings and tried them all and I see no difference.

TCampbell · Jul 15, 2015

It's EXTREMELY difficult to use a point & shoot camera and create beautiful out-of-focus background blur.

"Bokeh" refers to the quality of the blur (and not necessarily the strength of it). But in photography, we can create an out-of-focus blur by having a subject at close focusing distance, a background which is far beyond the subject, using a lens with a long focal length, and using a low focal ratio. All of those properties contribute to the strength of the blur, but the quality of the blur is largely a property of the shape of the lens aperture (how many aperture blades does the lens have and are they well-rounded?) and the quality of the glass.

If you used a DLSR... Say a Nikon D3300, and you used a lens with a slightly long-ish focal length and low focal ratio such as a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens (or an 85mm f/1.4 would be even better!)

Here are examples of Nikon's 50mm f/1.4 glass: Full-size sample photos from Nikon 50mm F 1.4

The reason you struggle to do this with your Coolpix camera is because the lens is a 4.5-63mm zoom lens (ignore the 35mm "equivalent" size, you have to use true focal length to calculate depth of field). But at that 63mm focal length (and frankly even at the 50mm focal length) the aperture is f/5.9 -- which isn't very low. Then add to this that the sensor size is very tiny (11mm diagonal) vs. a Nikon DSLR which is much larger (over 28mm diagonally -- a factor of about 2.6 times bigger) and you have to multiple the sensor crop factor by the focal ratio... so f/5.9 becomes f/15.34. That would be like a DSLR shooting the same shot with a 50mm lens at f/16 -- which would have such broad depth of field that most things would be in focus and you'd get almost no out-of-focus blur (what little you would have would be extremely weak.)

To get the effect you want, I'd suggest looking at a DSLR and then pickup a low cost 50mm lens to get started.

A Nikon D3300 will do it with a Nikkor AF-S 50mm f/1.8G lens... see: Full-size sample photos from Nikon 50mm F 1.8

A Canon T5 will do it with a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 STM lens... see: Full-size sample photos from Canon 50mm F 1.8
(Note that Canon just replaced the EF 50mm f/1.8 II with a new model called the EF 50mm f/1.8 STM. The new "STM" version has 7 aperture blades instead of 5 and a better/quieter focusing motor, but the optics are otherwise the same. The aperture blade change causes a big improvement in the quality of the out-of-focus bur. The 5-bladed version had a "jittery" quality to the out-of-focus blur. The Nikon 50mm already had a 7 blade aperture (the same as the new Canon lens).

I picked the cameras above because they are at the low-end of the price range on DSLR cameras but what you want doesn't require a high-cost camera "body" -- it's more about the camera "lens" (but you do need a body with a large sensor and all entry-level DSLR cameras have a large enough sensor to do what you want ... as long as it's paired with the right lens.)

I picked the 50mm f/1.8 lenses above because they can do what you want at a reasonable price-point. It's probably the least expensive way to get the effect that you want.

For as good as these examples are with 50mm f/1.8 lenses... the effect is even stronger with 50mm f/1.4 lenses (but those are more expensive). An 85mm f/1.4 lens would be even better yet, but you'll notice the price tags really start to rise as you get into the better quality lenses.

I have a Canon EF 135mm f/2L lens that can generate such a sweet & creamy bokeh quality that just looking at the images will give you Type II diabetes and heart-disease all at the same time. ;-)

Designer · Jul 15, 2015

kathy65 said:
I am trying to learn my camera, Nikon Coolpix L620, and I am frustrated and looking for ideas. I am basically teaching myself photography so I am a beginner.
I want to take some photos of my daughter in law (maternity), and be able to use the Bokeh effect on them. Problem is, this model will not let you change any aperture. I tried the Macro and Portrait setting, being close to object and background a distance away. Still nothing.

Any ideas how achieve this with the camera I have?

Also, can someone explain to me what image mode does? I have different settings and tried them all and I see no difference.

1. To get a shallow depth of field, you need to optimize certain physical attributes involved with the process such as aperture, focal length, distance to subject. Your lens may be adjustable for focal length to some degree, but by how much is the question.

The aperture is going to be automatic, and you can probably find the range of aperture listed in the user's manual. Just knowing the range of possibilities might not be of much help to you, but if you find it, you will no doubt see that the lens does not open up very wide (relatively speaking).

You MIGHT be able to "trick" the aperture to open to the maximum by adding light, such as using your flash, but to be frank, it's not going to open up to any significant ratio anyway.

So now you've only got the distance to subject and distance to the background to work with.

Get more light on your model (and to fool the camera, keep the background somewhat darker) and move a little closer to your subject and make sure the subject is standing well in front of the background. I think that is probably going to be the best with what you have.

2. "Image mode" makes slight adjustments to the saved file in the areas of (for example) contrast, color saturation, etc. You will probably not see a huge difference even if you photograph the same scene several times and turn the dial between each shot.

ph0enix · Jul 15, 2015

Experiment with getting very close to your subject and leaving a ton of space behind it. The more space the better.
This was shot with your camera (allegedly):
http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/coolpix/l/l620/img/sample/img_02.jpg

As you can see that the background is somewhat blurred.

Solarflare · Jul 16, 2015

ph0enix said:
As you can see that the background is somewhat blurred.

But only ever so slightly. The OP stands no chance whatsoever to blurr the background of a face. With such a small sensor, he will always be at hyperfocal distance, i.e. even infinity is sharp, when trying to photograph such a large subject.

KmH · Jul 16, 2015

The camera you have is a true 'point & shoot' in that the camera gives you no opportunity to make creative adjustments, like setting the camera up so a photo is made with a shallow depth-of-field.

You will have to get a camera that allows the right kind of settings to do what you want to do.

kathy65 · Jul 20, 2015

So what would everyone suggest for me? I don't want a really expensive one...mid range.

480sparky · Jul 20, 2015

D5xxx or D3xxx.

The_Traveler · Jul 22, 2015

'Expensive' and 'mid-range' means different things to different people.

What is your budget? prefered and maximum.

jaomul · Jul 22, 2015

kathy65 said:
So what would everyone suggest for me? I don't want a really expensive one...mid range.

D3200 and kit lens plus a 50mm f1.8g would be a great kit that won't have you remortgaging your house

kathy65 · Jul 23, 2015

jaomul said:
kathy65 said:

So what would everyone suggest for me? I don't want a really expensive one...mid range.

Click to expand...

D3200 and kit lens plus a 50mm f1.8g would be a great kit that won't have you remortgaging your house