 BetterPhoto Member |
Shooting with Aperture as Priority I have a Nikon 4300. Reading the manual, I am supposed to hold down the exposure button and use the right/left arrows. But when I take pictures, I'm not getting blurriness. Can anyone help me with using aperture? I love this camera and would like to use to its full potential.
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Jon Close |
The focal length of the 4300's zoom lens is only 8mm - 24mm. Such short focal lengths have great depth of field, even at f/2.8. The only way to get a shallow depth of field - i.e., sharp subject and blurry background - is to set the aperture to f/2.8 and get very close to your subject.
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Paul Michko |
I too have a 4300. I have found that if you set it for manual focus and then adjust the focus so that the subject is in focus, but the background is out of focus. What you are really doing is focusing more in front of the subject and making the subject the back end of your focal length. I leave my Manual setting on the mode where I can select the focus zone, then if you hold down the Timer/Focal setting and adjust the zoom button you will be put into manual focus. It works great because you can easily use it both ways. The only drawback is you need to use the LCD viewer to fucus. Subjects that are in focus will get a bright outline.
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Michael Kaplan |
FIrst of all, the smaller the Aperture (larger the number), the greater the deapth of field (dof). A f/2.8 will have less DOF than f/8 for example. The shallower the DOF, the more of the background that is out of focus (oof). With the modern digital cameras, the problem lies not only with the f stop though but also the size of the sensor. Film cameras were mostly 35mm in size but todays digicams, with the exception of only 2 cameras are all smaller in size. That means you will get greater dof at the same aperture. All you can do is to try and use the largest aperture your camera has and get closer to the person/object being photographed as the farther you are, the greater the dof as well. You can also do this afterwards by bringing the picture in to an editing program like PS, selecting the background and then putting a gausian blur on the background portion.
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member |
to michael: i took a pic at 24mm and the dof appeared more focussed than the one taken at 70mm (closeup crop) where the dof appeared very shallow. (all other camera/flash settings were the same for both, and lighting condition was also the same for both pics). why would this happen? (or maybe i've misunderstood altogether what you said). thanks for any info you could give to this.
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Michael Kaplan |
Yes, you either misunderstood or I just did not explain myself well enuf. You get less dof (more blur) with a telephoto lens than with a wide angle lens at the same distance. Wide angle gives you a larger dof so more things will appear focus. What I said or meant to say is the closer you get to your subject the less dof. Example, if you are shooting with a 50mm lens, and your subject is 20' away, there will be less dof (more background blur) if you were only 7' away. Lens focal length, aperture and distance combine to give you your DOF. An example is You can read up a bit more if you like here: I hope I made it clearer for you.
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member |
: ) thanks. i'll work on those experiments! (and thanks for your patience)
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