Creating shallow Depth of field in Point and shoot camera

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

3:08 PM

        Main draw back of a point and shoot camera is inability to blur background due to deep depth of field caused by the narrow aperture and small sensor size . But with some effort and understanding we can achieve shallow depth of field in point and shoot cameras to some extent.

Taken with a Olympus Point and shoot, in sports mode

We know that

• Wider the aperture the shallower the DOF.
• Longer the focal length shallower the DOF.

• Closer the focusing distance shallower the DOF.

Thus to achieve the shallowest DOF possible in a camera we should

1. Have the widest aperture set in camera (i.e., the lowest f/number)

2. Have the lens completely zoomed in
3. Select a subject that can be placed as close as possible (but far enough for the camera to focus)

Taken with a Olympus Point and shoot, in sport mode

Choosing the widest aperature in a point and shoot

Most of the point and shoot cameras won't allow you to set the aperature of the lens. It does that automatically, but there are ways to make the camera to select the widest aperatures they are

• By setting the camera in Portrait shooting mode.
• By setting the camera in sports mode.

In most cameras when shooting in portrait mode, the camera tries to keep the aperature wide open.But this is not the case in some cameras. In that scenario selecting sports shooting mode the camera will shoot  at highest shutter speed possible thus it will force the camera to use widest aperatures .

The last condition that has to be fullfilled in order to get very shallow depth of field is to shoot a subject at closest distance possible. But at distance more than minimum focusing distance of a particular camera.

And don't forget to put the camera on macro mode.

Taken with a Olympus Point And shoot, in portrait mode

Summing all up , to get shallow DOF on a point and shoot camera

• Place  the camera as close as possible and use macro mode
• Select Portrait shooting mode ,if it doesn't work use Sports shooting mode.
• Finally Half press shutter button when it searches for focus , press further more when  background is out of focus(do it quickly).