With a digital camera, how do you take photos so that the main image is clear but the backbround is blury?

I am wanting to take pictures of my son, but I am wanting to have the background blury and his face nice and clear...... Do I have to put special settings on my digital camera? and can I even do that by just using the digital camera or do I have to edit it?With a digital camera, how do you take photos so that the main image is clear but the backbround is blury?
If you have the control of the lens aperture, you should be able to control how much DOF (depth of field) you will have.





http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c317/w鈥?/a>





Same lens (50 mm f 1.8), camera, Canon 5D. I stood behind my nephew at the same spot.





Left photo, f 1.8, right photo, f 5.6.





If you use a point and shoot camera, and are not able to do much adjustment, there might be a ';portrait'; mode that may help.





To read more about DOF, please go here:





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_fi鈥?/a>





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Here we go:





http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/panaso鈥?/a>





Is this the right model? They did not have FZ2 listing.





You need to set it to ';Aperture Priority mode'; basically you pick the aperture, the camera picks the appropriate shutter speed. Set it to the lowest number possible (I think for this camera would be f 2.8), so the lens's aperture is wide open, so only your son is on focus, and the rest, behind him, is blurry.





The depth of field would be quite shallow--so you need to focus on his eyes, something like this:





http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c317/w鈥?/a>With a digital camera, how do you take photos so that the main image is clear but the backbround is blury?
It's going to be darn hard to ';de-focus'; too much using a digital camera while keeping the main subject in sharp focus. The smaller the sensor, the greater depth of field you will have. Generally speaking, the smaller the camera, the smaller the sensor. Your Panasonic has perhaps the smallest sensor I have ever heard of on a camera. It's only 4陆x3陆 mm. That's tiny. Most of the pictures you take with a digital camera are quite sharp from near to far distances and there is a reason for that which I will explain.





While we speak in terms of the 35 mm equivalency of digital lenses, don't forget that the digital sensors are usually smaller than a full-format 35 mm frame. Most of the more popular point and shoot cameras have the smaller sensors. It's only about 5 mm wide and 4 mm high. Yours is a bit smaller than that, so your problem is compounded. The 12X lens required to cover that angle of view is an ACTUAL 6-70 (approx.) mm zoom lens. At these focal lengths, the background is going to almost always be in pretty sharp focus.





In other words, if you WANT to defocus the background, you are going to have to work pretty hard at it. You would have to zoom to the longer end of the lens and set the aperture open as wide as it will go, if your camera even allows you to control the aperture, and get pretty close to your main subject while having the background a fair distance away.





Put your subjects quite a distance in front of any background that will be visible in your photo. You could use a garden of flowers and stand your subjects 20 yards or so in front of them. Try the portrait mode to shift things towards a larger aperture, zoom the lens out all the way, and move YOURSELF backwards or forwards in order to frame the picture as you would like it. In summary, you want to use a longer telephoto length, position yourself as close as you can to the main subject to compose properly, and place the main subject as far from the background that you wish to have out of focus as you possibly can.





With your camera, at least you have the advantage of a pretty long telephoto lens, so just zoom out and use the rules for positioning the subject and background as I have mentioned and you might make out okay.
There are special settings for this. Some cameras have a flower image and this is normally for close ups, but you can use it to get this effect as well.


Hope I helped!
The things that control this are





The aperture, you want this as wide open as possible


The distance from the subject, keep your son within 10 feet, closer if possible


The distance of the background, keep the background as far as possible from the subject


The focal lenght of the lens, use a zoom lens
any camera can do it, its harder with point n shoots or cropped sensors,





as pooky said use the portrait mode if you have it, if your using DSLR use a small aperture and full zoom will do it





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