multifocus, that is....3D effect, that is object in focus and rest of the background out of focus.... 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. Most of the more popular point and shoot cameras have the smaller 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.
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. On a lens of a SLR camera, there are "depth of field" markings which show what is in focus for a given aperature (f-stop) setting and focus distance. You need a digital camera with the same settings, able to manually set aperature and focus. Most digital cameras are fixed focus and you have no control of the shutter settings, but there are some which do have manual adjustments. Your problem is to find one which allows you to manually set aperature and focus. Then, you place the subject at the far end of the depth of field for whatever aperature you set. In general, the wider the aperature the shorter the depth of field, the more out of focus the background will be. |
