Fast action shot

[bikehikeskifish]

With most P&S digital cameras the DOF is always going to be very deep, due to the small size of the physical sensor. With the larger sensors in a dSLR it's much easier, but with nearly all P&S it's very hard to get a good background blur unless there is a significant distance between the subject and background.

Hey Dave, thanks for that little tidbit. I've noticed the effect was difficult to achieve and now I understand why. Especially at a zoom, where the f-stop is 4.5-5+.

Tim

 

[kmorgan]

I agree with Mark. The cropped photos are a big improvement, and the 2nd photo is wonderful.
Have you thought of printing it? Wonder how it would come out?

I'm going to print them out tonight. I'll let you know how they look.

Kevin

 

[kmorgan]

Prints came out real nice.

Kevin

 

[forestgnome]

I think we need to keep the shutter as fast as possible and not worry about the DOF, since it will be purposely blurred anyway.

That can't be right. If the shutter is too fast, we won't get motion blur despite panning.

 

[DougPaul]

With most P&S digital cameras the DOF is always going to be very deep, due to the small size of the physical sensor. With the larger sensors in a dSLR it's much easier, but with nearly all P&S it's very hard to get a good background blur unless there is a significant distance between the subject and background.

According to Ken Rockwell, http://www.kenrockwell.com, the DOF is inversely proportional to the square of the FL of the lens. So, to take the Canon A710 IS as an example, a 5.8mm actual FL results in an eFL (35 mm equiv FL) of 38mm. The ratio of the FLs is 6.55 and thus the A710 will have 43 times the DOF (for the same eFL) of a camera with a 35mm sensor or 35mm film.

This also means that cameras with a 1.6 crop factor (eg Canon Digital Rebel series, 20D, 20D,and 40D) will have ~2.6 times the DOF of camera with a full-frame sensor.

Doug