I am just learning how to use my digital Canon camera. Can you advise me on how to blurr the background?

I want to bring the foreground object into sharp focus while blurring out the background. How do I achieve this feature?

You are all so kind to respond with this very useful information. Yes, I am a beginner as you can likely tell. I should have mentioned my camera which is a Canon PowerShot Digital 4 Elph. While it has been a handy little travelling camera, I am now realizing its (along with my own) creative limitations. Again, thanks to you all.

To blur the background (this is called Bokeh (pronounced BO KEH')), you set the camera to create a short Depth of Field. Then place you subject inside the in-focus area and shoot. Everything except your subject will be out of focus and blurred.

You have some flexibility in the setup, but the things that promote a short Depth of Field are :

. Use a low f-stop (Use Aperture priority or Portrait scene mode).
. Use the telephoto end of your optical zoom
. Put some distance between the subject and the background.
. Put some distance between you and the subject.

Because there is flexibility in these parameters, you can experiment to get a combination that works in the situation you have.

If you want more detail, check out:

http://www.aakatz.com/whitepaper/Part8.h...

Good Luck

If you're referring to the blurred backtground effect in portraits, that's done by using a large aperture.

add a filter to the lens... they have them available for just that purpose, and a whole ton of other effects

What camera are you using?? You will need to change a setting if you camera is able to do this.
Use setting Aperture priority mode.Using this mode will set the shutter based on the F stop you pick and the focal length. This is the dial on top.. Should be a few clicks away from automatic...
Auto
P
T (shutter priority)
A (Aperture Priority)

First focus on the object (setting the focal length)
Then ,Set the F stop as low as you can (3-4 is good, depending on the lense you are using)
this should get you a nice blurred background.

focus on the foreground and set your f stop to something like 5.6. The larger the aperture (smaller the #) the less focus you will achieve. The smaller the aperture, the more overall focus you will have.

It sounds as if you are an amateur photographer. The easiest way to start is to set your camera to portrait mode (the picture of the face). This sets the camera settings to focus on the main subject and not the background - causing it to blur somewhat.

If you can't get your desired effect, then you can start messing with the manual controls - your manual should be helpful in this.

Also, go to the Canon website - they have great tutorials on how to achieve different effects.

this is done by making a large distance between your subject and background, the larger this distance is the better "out of focus" the background will look. the next step is to scoot back away from your subject and zoom in as far as you can with your camera. if you know how to change your settings to have the smallest aperture do that too (smallest number)

It's going to be darn hard to "de-focus" too much using your camera while keeping the main subject in sharp focus.

Most of the pictures you take with your 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. The Elph's have one of the smaller point and shoot sensors. It's only about 5 mm wide and 4 mm high. The lens on 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.