X-Dan_Gunter
Imported Account
Aug 18, 2000, 9:40 PM
Post #3 of 3
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Re: How to blurr the background...?
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Hi, George! What you are trying to accomplish is (in technical terms) a narrow "depth of field." The depth of field is affected primarily by the lens aperture setting. The higher the f-stop reading (which is actually a SMALLER aperture opening) the larger the depth of field, meaning a greater distance in front and behind the "focus" subject will also be in focus.
In order to decrease the depth of field, there are a few things you can do. One is to decrease the amount of light in the scene, which will result in the need to open the lens aperture wider (lower f-stop number) in order to get correct exposure. Of course if you are shooting outdoors during the day that might not be very feasible. But you can resort to trick number two, which is to shoot using a higher shutter speed, which means you will again have to open the aperture wider for correct exposure. The third and final trick is to move close to your subject and keep as much distance between the subject and background as possible. For instance, if the subject is ten feet away from the camera and the background is a hundred feet away, the background will be more out of focus than it would be if you moved the subject ten feet farther away from you (twenty feet away) and the background was still a hundred feet away.
There is one other thing you might try if you are shooting outdoors in daylight: use a neutral density filter over your camera lens. This will decrease the amount of light entering the lens slightly, so you would open the aperture slightly to compensate.
Hope this information is helpful to you.
Dan Gunter
Cane Creek Productions
Woodland, AL
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