I can't get a blurred background

Your focal length is 5mm? :confused:

P&S camera with tiny sensor. That 5mm is probably like somewhere around 30mm equivalent.

It's SUPER hard to get a nice blurred background with a P&S camera. If that's what you want, your best bet is to go buy a DSLR.
 
Derrel is right. P&S cameras do not do depth of field very well. You'll have to fake it, which usually bring poor results, get a digital SLR, or live with what you get from your P&S.
 
Im still positive though if you only take her head and maybe some of her body, you can blur out the background.
 
Im still positive though if you only take her head and maybe some of her body, you can blur out the background.

Ok cool, I'll give that a try. I would like to take pics like this

IMG_7112.JPG


That is from my uncle's dslr camera. Is it possible to even get close to that with my P&S?
 
the house on that shot is way farther than the house on your first shot.. But yeah, you need to get really close but the background far away.
 
That is from my uncle's dslr camera. Is it possible to even get close to that with my P&S?
Probably not so likely with a P&S. But close enough might be attainable. Depends on your standards. It's purely a matter of physics. The P&S sensor is the dog of the bunch. Nothing wrong with that, but you need to know these things.
 
Go here and you will see your DOF for your camera.

At the settings you noted, the DOF is 4.6ft in front of the subject and infinity in back. If you zoom in to 50mm and step back to say 15 ft so you can frame the subject your DOF will be 0.37ft in front and 0.39ft in back, this would give you a nice bokeh but would make it a challenge to get the subject in focus.
 
I have that same camera (I thought I was the only one here! :D Glad to find another one of us H50 users...) and this for me is one of its most annoying shortcomings. I find that if I zoom all the way in and use a wide aperture (which yeah, is what everyone has been telling you - Also, press the macro button which seems to help a little), I get my best results but it's usually not really comparable to what I see from DSLRs and such. Especially with people and large animals/objects. Smaller subjects seem to work better, like this one of a rooster:

Involved | Flickr - Photo Sharing!.

This is probably the best I can get, which isn't bad but he is a lot smaller than a human. And notice it's just his head - I couldn't have gotten the background as out of focus if it was his whole body. I was not all the close to him, though - a good twenty feet, perhaps? Not zoomed in all the way, I don't think, but it was a fair amount. The background was maybe 4 -6 feet behind him. I've tried using my whole self as a practice model and using some trees - several acres away - to do the same thing with the background but I just can't get it.

Good luck. Yay for Sony H50. ;)
 
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Heh, I have a H20 as my P+S counterpart and trying to get blurred backgrounds that don't detract from the photos is a pain. The minimum focal length on my camera is 38mm. I tried for so long and what seems to be the biggest problem is the focus. You can line up all you want but God forbid you actually want to focus on something other than what your camera thinks is the main focus..

It's workable, it just takes a lot more time in planning and fiddling with the controls. Just keep the aperture as open as it'll go and stand as close as you can to get as much of "her" as you can.

Pretty much just repeating what everyone else has been telling you but, having a very similar camera, I feel your pain.
 
This is one of the reasons why I switched from P&S to DSLR avoiding bridge camera, which have the same sensors as P&S (see Derrel comment on sensor and following). You may obtain some blurring in specific conditions, but never at the same level.
(and if you need other reasons to justify the expense ;): less noise in low light, much quicker shots, more pictures with battery).
 
i say get a view camera if you want shallow depth of field, that's how Avedon did it, that's how america did it, and it's worked out well so far ;)
 
Small correction... focal length does not affect DOF. Try it. Zoom in on an out of focus area while looking through the viewfinder. Does the bokeh change? No, it only fills more of the frame. Using a longer FL compresses the bokeh against the subject so you see a smaller area of it, causing a perceived increase in bokeh, but technically, it does not change it in any way. :)
 
If you know how to post process blurring can be done there.
 

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