Question about blurring out background

So I just got a Canon SX10 and I've been playing around with it while reading the manual.

I'm having a problem, so I take a close up object at macro, like a water bottle or a face. However I can't get the background blurry where it would leave the face nice and sharp.

I tried to use f2.8 because this would mean a big aperture and small depth of field correct? Shouldn't this do it? I'm using aperture priority.

Thanks

Because of small sensor size, point and shoot cameras like the SX10 generally have huge DOF even at f/2.8.

You can try manually adding blur in photoshop.

Yeah that small sensor is going to limit you. I think I read that f/2.8 on a P&S is about the same as f/11 on a 35mm. The closer you are to the subject and the farther the background is behind the subject, the better.

The size of the sensor also plays a big part and because of the SX10s smaller sensor, it has a much greater DOF. You can compensate by separating the background and subject more.

Could you post the pictures so that we might see the problem?

Using a long lens setting (stepping back and zooming in) helps reduce DOF too.

you can also blur the background in Photoshop, either with cutout software or this -
http://www.republicofc​ode.com …eo/gradient_mas​k_blur.php

I found that staying back as far as you can and then zooming in really works to blur the background. You might have to use a tripod.

Litespeed wrote in post #8689366
I found that staying back as far as you can and then zooming in really works to blur the background. You might have to use a tripod.

Yup. thats what I was about to suggest too. Our SX10 has 20X zoom that is very useful for this. Only peeve is that there is a minimum focusing distance (camera to subject), which could be (sometimes) overcomed by using Marco mode.

This shot was in Super-Macro mode @ f2.8 and the background blurred relatively well. All SX10 settings can be found in bottom link.