S50 Portrait MOde

[halund]

I purchased a Canon S50 in order to take portraits with the background blurred. Guess what.. the background only slightly blurred..I called tech support and was told that the camera should be in macro mode.. This is not a good mode to shoot portaits. Any suggestions???

[Pewterpez]

in the manual it suggests using telephoto on portraits to increase the blur on the background: 'The background gets increasingly indistinct the more you adjust the focal length toward telephoto"

so try stepping back and bust out the optical zoom...

but I also agree with the canon's support suggestion of using macro, because macro uses a small DOF and thus only the subject is in focus.

[halund]

Thanks for the info. I did use the telephoto since I do not like to get too close to the subject. I took some shots in macro mode and the background was still not blurred. According to the manual, the background is supposed to be blurred in portrait mode or else what is the purpose of this mode? I have a 35mm Canon EOS Elan and it does a great job of blurring the background in portrait mode. That is why I chose the S50 in the first place. I have a Ricoh RDC 7 digital camera which takes great pictures but did not have a portrait mode, that is why I spent the money on the S50 but right now it is not performing any better than my Ricoh

[Guillermo Freige]

You never will obtain a very blurred background with digicams (not as blurred of the 35mm one) because you are using a 7-21 lens, and the depth of field (DoF) is proportional to the focal length of the lens, so the DoF of a digicam is much larger than the 35mm one at the same coverture angle. This large DoF also affect the flash shots, and you also can see some "white dots" in the wide angle shots, product of the partially focused dust particles in the air, never present in a 35mm shots, unless you are using a 14mm lens or so.
So, try using the larger aperture (not very large in the S50 at 4.9 in tele mode, the G5 with its 3.0 tele has less DoF), and the subjet as close as possible, and the background in infinite is possible, to maximize the blur effect, when shooting in P or Av mode, or use the portrait mode (it chooses the widest aperture possible), but don't expect too much blur.

[halund]

Thanks, I will give it a try....maybe I will have to stick to my 35mm for outdoor portrait shots

[Pewterpez]

Guillermo --

just a technicality: when you say a larger aperture, is that like f8.0? or f2.8 (which is physically bigger than the f8.0) it depends on relation to the number or the actual size ;)

just curious.

[Guillermo Freige]

I'm speaking of the "physical" aperture, not it's f number.
So, to me f2.8 is "larger" than f5.6 :)

[Pewterpez]

ahh okay :)