I am looking for the right lens

[Kerenfedida]

I have a canon D60.
I wanted to find a lens with a wide angle,something very flat that will cause everything in the back of the subject to blur.

I saw a lens like that once but forgot to ask what mm was it.

Any ideas?
Sorry i am not being more specific... :rolleyes:

[fuzzybabybunny]

You mean you want a wide angle lens with a large aperture for decreased DOF? The brightest wide-angle that I know of are the Canon 17-35mm and 16-35mm, both at f/2.8.

http://www.fredmiranda.com/17_35VS16_35/

Be prepared to pay a lot for a bright lens.

[Jon]

Wide angle lenses generally have very large depth of of field, so the back and front are all fairly sharp. If you want a shallow depth of field, you want as large an aperture (little an f/stop number, say f/1.4) as you can get. It also helps to have a great deal of separation between the subject and the background, and to be as close to the subject as possible.

What are you trying to photograph? Landscapes? Portraits? Macro?

[chris clements]

As Jon says, wide angles and background blur tend not to go together. You'll need to explain a bit more.

[fuzzybabybunny]

If you guys look in the link that I posted above you can see some sample shots with some ok background blur.

[a1Killer]

Like most things related to photography there is an easy way to do what you want (spelled expensive as in a $1,000 lens) and a more difficult way (spelled inexpensive). Given all the improvements in cameras over the past four or five years, if you are still shooting with a D60, my guess is you are on a tight budget. But, never fear, I am the king of doing a lot with very few $'s.

Take your D60 and set it to aperture priority. Then check your lenses and select the one that has the smallest F number. Put that lens on the camera and make the necessary adjustments for all the extra light going into the lens. Then, move your subject as far as you reasonably can from the background and set the camera on a tripod as close as you reasonably can to the subject. This should give you the effect you desire.

However, to be safe, when you finish with your subject and before you move the camera take some shots of the background. Manually focus the camera for a close-up like you were going to take a macro. Take several different shots with various settings. When you get back to the shop, see which background shots you like best. If your original with the subject did not work as well as you wanted, it is easy to use some software like CS2 to layer your subject into a very out of focus background only pic.

I hope you will post the results of your efforts. It sounds like in interesting project.

;)

[chris clements]

there is an easy way to do what you want
..but isn't the whole thrill of this thread that the OP hasn't yet told us what (s)he wants to achieve ???

[Jim_T]

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=86975

[Jon]

If you guys look in the link that I posted above you can see some sample shots with some ok background blur.. . . which may, or may not, be what OP wants. We need to know what effect she's looking for to be able to answer her question.

[a1Killer]

Hey silly rabbits, don't make this hard. The question simply said "blur the background". It sounds like a question a novice with a D60 would ask. That's the question I tried to answer (without spending a lot of $ on a new lens). If I answered the wrong way, I bet this lady is smart enough to say so and give us another chance.

What say Keren, did my suggestion help or not?

:)

[Jon]

Hey silly rabbits, don't make this hard. The question simply said "blur the background". It sounds like a question a novice with a D60 would ask. That's the question I tried to answer (without spending a lot of $ on a new lens). If I answered the wrong way, I bet this lady is smart enough to say so and give us another chance.

What say Keren, did my suggestion help or not?

:)You answered half of her question. As we pointed out, you can have wide angle or you can have shallow depth of field. Further, "wide angle" and "flat" aren't necessarily the same thing, as "flat" may be implying telephoto compression of the subject. We prefer to answer the whole question the OP asked, not to select part of it for which ther's an easy answer. Sometimes that means asking for more specifics.