need help with A40 focus

[jonykool]

Using an A40, how do you get the background out of focus while keeping your subect in focus?

I have read the manual and can't find it.

Please help!

[JohnMN]

Read your posting tonight. Everyone who owns an A40 seems to be having some kind of problem with the focusing on the camera. I now stick to the middle resolution of 1024 x768 and that seems to display reasonably sharp images. I don't know if that's due to the resolution of my monitor or what. If using the three green squares to focus with, I think you have to get all three on the lcd monitor to appear for the subject to be in focus. Also try using the macro for really close up work, the snap shot for 'people' shots and of course landscape for far away stuff. Or you could try using the center point focusing to make sure the image at the center of the lcd is in focus and everything around it isn't. The flash on the camera I have found is too powerful for a normal room in a house and so leads to burn out in your pictures, so I made a little diffuser from a small piece of tracing paper and folded it at right angles and stuck it onto the camera body with blu tack.

[jgillard]

I do not think that that was what johnykool was asking. To keep your subject in focus and the background blurred, you need to have an appropriate depth of field. Most digicams have a large dof making this difficult. I would read up on this for better details on how to get this to work!