how can i make the background blurry when shooting a macro image?

Question

i have a canon sd 1000 and i want to know how can i make my background out of focus while the close up item is focused

Answer 1

In macro, this should not be TOO much of a problem, but here is my general discussion on depth of field with point and shoot cameras.

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 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.

Here is an example with a point and shoot camera. 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/samfeinstein/872732755/

Here is an example with a point and shoot camera, so it CAN be done. The background is much farther away,though.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/843563558/

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/samfeinstein/408446616/

Answer 2

You probably can't, especially in that situation. What you are asking about is called depth of field. If you have a lens that can be openned way out (big, low f/ number) then the area that is in focus is shallow, so you can focus on one limitted area and have the rest blurry. One way to do this with automatic cameras is to set the shutterspeed fast (like 1/250 of a second or more) when light is moderate. Or you can force the lens opening large with manual settings and let the camera go fast. So look for manual settings to force lens opening or shutter speed The problem is that requires a ratio of how far it is to the object vs how far to the background and football players on the field are too far away - when you focus on them the depth includes the background. In many sports situations, the background is blurred because the camera is following the object (panning) so it is not changing on the exposure, while the audience is ignored. Many older digitals (like mine) take long enough to do the exposure that panning becomes impossible. Your image stabilizer, which takes the images collected by the detector and moves them so they line up in the final image works to remove blur. I just looked at your example picture and it is perfect for background blur and has nothing to do with sports - the flower is within a few inches off the lens and the background is several feet back.

Answer 3

Generally speaking, this is not much of a problem with macro shots. Macro shots typically have extremely narrow depth of field. Because of this, putting camera into macro modes usually forces the camera to adjust the aperture to get as much in focus as possible, and this may be causing you to get backgrounds in focus, or at least, more in focus than you like.

I would put the camera into macro mode and then decrease the ambient light to force the camera to use a wider aperture. I don't know if your camera will go into macro mode if you choose aperture preferred, but if it will focus in macro, you can try aperture preferred and select a wide aperture.

Answer 4

You need to either spot focus on the subject or manually focus on the subject at a close distance.

Macro shots are tricky, so you might just play around with the settings for a while. If you still can't get it right, you might consider a more high-end camera.

If you stick with Canon, I'd go with a Digital Rebel XT. It costs about $699 and it comes with a basic 18-55mm lens.

Hope this helps and good luck with your photography!

Answer 5

Dr. Sam is 100% correct. Give him his 10 points.

Unfortunately, farcry needs to learn more about camera lenses. To my knowledge, the only f1.0 lenses produced were by Leica, Canon and Nikon. They were definitely NOT macro lenses.

There is no such thing as an f1.0 macro lens. Most macro lenses are from f2.8 to f4.0 and between 70mm to 180mm.

Answer 6

Shoot it at the widest aperture first then the next aperture setting then the next etc. Look at the photo each time to see which one has the best appealing bokeh to you and use that aperture setting.

Answer 7

Open the aperature as wide as possible, say to F2. That makes for the narrowest depth of field, such that only the thing you are focusing on will be in focus.

Answer 8

If you are shooting in macro mode the far object will always be blurr since its automatically changes the setting to a very low apature. Some good macro lenses go below as 1f.