backrounds

How to blur image backrounds?

I love photography, but there is a skill I can’t figure out. I do “Close UP” on my camera, but it doesn’t work. I have a pentax 6 MP digi touch screen camera, but that may not make a difference

I want to know how to take a picture of, say a leaf, and be able to blur everything in the backround. Like have the leave up close.

This may be a little wordy, but it gets the point across

Thanks in advance!

Trial and error is a good way to find things out. Since you are working with a digital camera, and I don’t use the things, there is no excessive cost or wait to find out what works.

What you have been told about shutter speed and aperture is good information. However what I would recommend is bracketing to see what works the way that you want it.

Bracketing is done by most professional photographers. With film, for instance, it can get expensive – especially with medium and large format cameras. And it can take time to get the results since it takes time to develop the film and print it.

I take a lot of pictures of flowers that I find either while hiking or in the yard – things that I don’t know what they are or things that I think are very interesting and, perhaps, limited in where you can see them.

Carefully keeping notes about what your shutter speed and aperture are, take a zillion pictures, each time changing the speed and/or the aperture. If you can turn your camera auto focus off, do that. Of the zillion of pictures that you will take, one will have the thing that you are looking for. Compare the pictures and see what is happening every time, for instance, that you have your camera set a f5.6 and change the shutter speed from 1000 of a second all the way down to whereever you want it.

That is basically what I do with a 67 format camera (about 4x larger than 35mm). It cost me a lot of money, but I get the picture I want. I usually take four bracketed shots – one at what the meter says, one an f stop smaller, and 2 at successive larger f stops. (or I use shutter speeds).

If you do as I do, take pictures of plants, bugs, etc, lighting is extremely important and I would suggest that you have a hand held light meter, probably one with a spot meter on it, to make sure that the lighting on the subject is correct and you are not averaging light in the whole picture.

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