How to make my camera focus on one thing and make the background blurry?
So, I have Nikon 1 J2. And I wanted to do this so that the picture will stand out and look good. I'm not sure if it's possible to do this with this camera but, if it is. How can I do it? I've had this camera for a while now but still can't seem to figure out how to do it.
For shallow depth of field, you need to use the widest aperture your camera's lens allows. Assuming you have the kit 10-30 f/3.5-5.6 lens, you'll want the f/3.5 (if shooting at 10mm), or f/5.6 (if shooting at 30mm). Set your camera to the Creative Mode and choose A (aperture priority) mode. See page 28 of your manual here.
http://www.nikonusa.com/...2UM_EN.pdf
And here's a video to show you how to use different controls.
Look at what a wider aperture does for depth of field here.
http://www.nikonusa.com/...rture.html
Press the shutter button half way to focus. There should be a dot or some sort of indicator that will show you if it focused on something or not.
Making the background blurry and the subject in focus is called 'shallow depth of field' and can be achieved easiest by standing further back and zooming in.
If you want a more consistent and reliable technique, set your exposure mode to 'Aperture Priority Mode' and select the lowest f-stop your lens allows (which is probably 3.5 on the wide end, and 5.6 on the telephoto (zoomed in) end.
It's called DOF (Depth of Field). Read this article to learn.
Http://keerok-photography.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-blur-background.html
To get a background blur, you need a shallow depth-of-field.
* The longer the focal length of the lens, the shallower the depth-of-field.
* The closer you can get to your subject, the shallower the depth-of-field.
* The larger aperture you set (smaller number), the shallower the depth-of-field.
Here is a tutorial to explain it:
http://www.althephoto.com/concepts/selectivefocus.php
You need to learn about Depth of Field (DOF).
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/...-field.htm
DOF is that area in focus in front of your subject to that area in focus behind your subject.
There are only three factors that affect your DOF:
1) The focal length of the lens.
2) The aperture used.
3) The subject distance.
At this site - http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html - you can use the DOF Calculator to compute your DOF using any combination of the three factors imaginable. For accuracy choose your make and model of camera from the pop-up list. Then choose a focal length, aperture and subject distance. Here are two examples with a subject at 5'-0''.
10mm @ f3.5 focused on a subject at 5'-0'' your DOF will be from 3'-2'' to 12'-4''. Anything from 1'-10'' in front of your subject (3'-2'' in front of your camera) to anything 7'-4'' behind your subject will be in focus. Anything more than 7'-4'' behind your subject will be out of focus.
30mm @ f5.6 focused on a subject at 5'-0'' your DOF will be from 4'-6'' to 5'-7''. Anything from 0'-6'' in front of your subject (4'-6'' in front of your camera) to anything 0'-7'' behind your subject will be in focus. Anything more than 0'-7'' behind your subject will be out of focus.