My Canon and background blur

KerrBear

Do I want to manually set my Canon PowerShot SX20 IS or should I just use the many pre-set options that it comes with?

Here is an example of a photo that did not come out correctly because I had the camera on "Auto". I wanted to have everything aside from the handlebar and the first bike rack rung to be in clear focus and the other rungs to blur a little more the farther back it went. I have NO IDEA how to make my camera do this.



Then I accidentally took this photo, which was also on Auto but without a flash. Half of my son's face is too dark but I very much like the blurring in the background.

colourbox

A few variables will control background blur:
Focal length (longer is better)
Aperture (more open/a lower number is better)
Distance to subject (closer is better)

If you want to get as much background blur as you can in manual mode, zoom in all the way, open up the aperture all the way, and get close to your subject and fill the frame.

If you are in an auto mode, try the Portrait setting and zoom in and get close.

You should be able to analyze your two photos using these variables and the EXIF data, and figure out what happened.

Scott_Quier

There's a manual mode on that camera (at least according to the reviews). If you do as colourbox has indicated:

colourbox wrote:

If you want to get as much background blur as you can in manual mode, zoom in all the way, open up the aperture all the way, and get close to your subject and fill the frame.

and do it in manual mode, looking at your histogram to get an idea of where your exposure should fall (remember, snow is white and should appear as a spike on the right side of the chart) you will be able to better control all three of the variables and can get the shot you are wanting in less time than it takes to talk about it.

mutti_wilson

Put in Aperture Priority mode, and set the F number to the lowest it will go. Remember that your focal length (zoom) makes a big difference (longer the length, the more out of focus your background will be.

Take an object and put it close to your eye and focus on it. Notice how the background is out of focus? Move the object farther away from your eye and you will notice that everything starts to clear up. Think of zooming as just moving your camera toward the subject.

zoomer

Put it on the Portrait setting, that will give you your shortest depth of field.
If you take a picture of a person very close to you the back ground will blur.
If you take a picture of a person 10 feet away the back ground will not blur as much.