help with depth of field

[pie78]

Here is a shot I took this morning. I'm trying to figure out how to make parts standout and blur the rest. So for this picture, I want the flower to be in focus and the rest of the picture to be blurred. Am I not standing at the correct distance from my subject? Thanks for your help.

http://digital-photography-school.co...ictureid=10944


Here is my info:
Olympus SP550UZ
f/2.8
1/60
ISO 100
focal lenghth 5mm (I'm not sure what this means exactly.)

[firstrays]

Originally Posted by pie78

Here is a shot I took this morning. I'm trying to figure out how to make parts standout and blur the rest. So for this picture, I want the flower to be in focus and the rest of the picture to be blurred. Am I not standing at the correct distance from my subject? Thanks for your help.

http://digital-photography-school.co...ictureid=10944


Here is my info:
Olympus SP550UZ
f/2.8
1/60
ISO 100
focal lenghth 5mm (I'm not sure what this means exactly.)

The amount of blurring you'd get would also depend on how far the rest of the objects are from the main subject. You can look at some online DOF calculators like http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html to get an estimate of what range of your photo will be in focus.

In your case, since the little girl is pretty close to the flower, to get only the flower sharply in focus, you need to shoot wide open - f/1.4 or f/1.8, and be as close as possible to the flower.

i agree with the above. but for now if you liked this photo you can edit it in pp. but next time knock it down to F1.8 and get as close to flower as possible while still keeping girl in shot...but focus on the flower. i was bored, i hope you dont mind, i took your picture and played around with it in pp. i clonned out the background, did a soft focus to blur everything but the flower,then changed it to b&w but leaving flower in color. hope you enjoy.

here is my edit

[kencaleno]

The problem is that you need to understand that in compact/point & shoot cameras, Apertures are not the same as for full-frame or 1.5/1.6 crop cameras.

Here's how they relate:

point and shoot F8 = DSLR F22
" F5.6 = " F16
" F4 = " F11
" F2.8 = " F8
" F2 = " F5.6

So at F2.8 ,you are at F8 in reality
And your lens focal length of 5mm = " 38mm

So,from this, you can understand that unless you have a great distance between your subject and the background you will not have sufficient blur. So you will need to resort to image manipulation, using one of the blur tools,lens blur being the most appropriate.

I hope this explains things clearly. Regards, Ken

[dcclark]

The girl is SO close to the flower, that any real blurring of the girl would probably look very unnatural. That's just how the eye sees things, I think it'll be a bit weird to get such a shallow depth of field here.

[kencaleno]

Originally Posted by pie78

Here is a shot I took this morning. I'm trying to figure out how to make parts standout and blur the rest. So for this picture, I want the flower to be in focus and the rest of the picture to be blurred. Am I not standing at the correct distance from my subject? Thanks for your help.

http://digital-photography-school.co...ictureid=10944


Here is my info:
Olympus SP550UZ
f/2.8
1/60
ISO 100
focal lenghth 5mm (I'm not sure what this means exactly.)

Pie78 I tried to answer you request on my private messagembut apparentlty Pie 78 is an invalid username you are not on the list of members-as for your question-cheapest way for you is to grab a used canonXT and a F1.8 50mm prime lens to get the blur (bokeh) you want, regards, Ken

[bonnieg1]

I have an Olympus 570UZ. I am wondering what shooting mode you were using. A lot of times shooting auto with macro setting will give you look you're after.