What are the best shutter speed and aperture to use when taking portraits outdoors!?!? I want to blur the background!! Thanks!!Www@QuestionHome@Com
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Position:Home>Visual Arts> What settings to use when taking outdoor portraits??Question: What settings to use when taking outdoor portraits!?!? What are the best shutter speed and aperture to use when taking portraits outdoors!?!? I want to blur the background!! Thanks!!Www@QuestionHome@Com
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Well I can't tell you the exact shutter speed but I would use ISO 100 and the widest aperture you have got on your lens!. The wide aperture will make for a shallow DOF!. Then just set your shutter accordingly!.Www@QuestionHome@Com shutter speed needs to be at least 1/60 or higher, probably 1/125th is best!. and to blur the background you need a fairly wide aperture - 5!.6 or wider!.Www@QuestionHome@Com Wait! I see you got a new camera, so congratulations! This is an excellent job, too: http://www!.flickr!.com/photos/carrierox4e!.!.!. Who could ask for more!? You could have maybe zoomed out to 90-100mm and backed up some more, but this is fine by my standards!. If you want to blur the background, you'll need the largest lens opening you can get!. You'll also want to use a longer telephoto setting, such as the mid-range on your new camera!. Zoom out and back up from your subject until they fit the frame the way you want them to!. Use ISO 64 so that the camera will be forced to open up the lens as much as possible!. The long answer from my stored answers: It's going to be darn hard to "de-focus" too much using a digital camera while keeping the main subject in sharp focus!. The smaller the sensor, the greater depth of field you will have!. Generally speaking, the smaller the camera, the smaller the sensor!. Most of the pictures you take with a digital camera are quite sharp from near to far distances and there is a reason for that which I will explain!. While we speak in terms of the 35 mm equivalency of digital lenses, don't forget that the digital sensors are usually smaller than a full-format 35 mm frame!. Most of the more popular point and shoot cameras, including your new Kodak, have the smaller sensors!. It's only about 5 mm wide and 4 mm high!. The 3X lens required to cover that angle of view is an ACTUAL 6-17 mm zoom lens!. At these focal lengths, the background is going to almost always be in pretty sharp focus!. In other words, if you WANT to defocus the background, you are going to have to work pretty hard at it!. You would have to zoom to the longer end of the lens and set the aperture open as wide as it will go, if your camera even allows you to control the aperture, and get pretty close to your main subject while having the background a fair distance away!. Put your subjects quite a distance in front of any background that will be visible in your photo!. You could use a garden of flowers and stand your subjects 20 yards or so in front of them!. Try the portrait mode to shift things towards a larger aperture, zoom the lens out all the way, and move YOURSELF backwards or forwards in order to frame the picture as you would like it!. In summary, you want to use a longer telephoto length, position yourself as close as you can to the main subject to compose properly, and place the main subject as far from the background that you wish to have out of focus as you possibly can!. The bigger the sensor, the easier it will be to achieve pleasing bokeh!. This means moving to a dSLR, which all have sensors about 20 times bigger than the typical P&S digicam!. If you want to really go for brokeh (very bad pun intended), you can get a Canon 5D and you will get exactly the same effect you are accustomed to in a 35 mm camera, since the sensor is the same size as 35 mm film!. Here is an example with a point and shoot camera, although it does have the larger sensor (1/1!.8") that makes it easier to blur the background!. Even though this is macro mode and f/2!.8, where the background should blur the most, it's not terribly blurry because it's relatively close to the subject!. http://www!.flickr!.com/photos/samfeinstei!.!.!. Here is an example with a point and shoot camera, so it CAN be done!. The background is much farther away, though, and this is the larger sensor size!. http://www!.flickr!.com/photos/samfeinstei!.!.!. Compare that to this image, though, which has a similar subject-to-background distance!. The SLR has the obvious advantage!. http://www!.flickr!.com/photos/samfeinstei!.!.!. Wikipedia does pretty well on the subject of depth of field!. See: http://en!.wikipedia!.org/wiki/Depth_of_fi!.!.!. See also: http://www!.photo!.net/learn/optics/dofdig!.!.!. See also: http://www!.flickr!.com/groups/dof/ Okay, I remember who has the SD600 now!.!.!. I can picture her avatar, but she just changed her name!. I do like your outdoor portrait that I linked, though!.Www@QuestionHome@Com |