How to blur background with Panny FZ20

[jcharris]

Have you tried to stand back a bit further and zoom in a bit more ?
I think to get a nice shallow dof one should to get to a distance where you could use the zoom to maximum effect . Maybe also try to use the manual focus .And how far are the houses from the tree you tried to focus on ? What i also experienced is to get as much space as possible between the object you want to shoot and the background .

Hope this helps a bit .
Regards
james

I have tried lowering the aperture to 2.8 and adjusting the shutter for correct exposure but I cannot match the focus in the foreground and blur the back ground like my 35mm slr will. What am I doing wrong or is it not possible. Note I am not shooting macro shots.

For an example, I tried focusing on a tree that was about 5 feet away whit the hopes of blurring out the houses in the back ground. But every setting keeps the houses focused quite well.

[outofline]

James,
Have you tried with your FZ20 to do as I am trying. I cant say I have tried using the zoom to see if this helps. I am at work now so I cant play around with it, but it would be interesting to see if other FZ20 owners can achieve this. I will play around with it tomorrow and post my pics and results. Do you have a SLR35mm to play with to see how that handles the same settings?

Wes

[jcharris]

Here is one i got with the background blurred using the fz 20 .
I do not have a slr35 mm to play around with .I do not know if this picture could be similar to what you want to achieve ?

Regards
james

James,
Have you tried with your FZ20 to do as I am trying. I cant say I have tried using the zoom to see if this helps. I am at work now so I cant play around with it, but it would be interesting to see if other FZ20 owners can achieve this. I will play around with it tomorrow and post my pics and results. Do you have a SLR35mm to play with to see how that handles the same settings?

Wes

[outofline]

Yes that is it, Was you using the zoom? I will have to play with it some more tomorow.
Thanks

Wes

[outofline]

Did some testing this morning and the only way I can get the background to blur is using the zoom and focusing in on the main subject. Kind of frustrating when my SLR will do it no matter what lens I am using just by lowering the aperture along with focusing.

Here are acouple of my test shots:

[Chunk]

Did some testing this morning and the only way I can get the background to blur is using the zoom and focusing in on the main subject. Kind of frustrating when my SLR will do it no matter what lens I am using just by lowering the aperture along with focusing.

Here are acouple of my test shots:

If you put a 7-76 mm lens on that slr it will act about the same way.

[jcharris]

I took a few more this afternoon just to show you some more examples.
Yes i did use the zoom to get the effect . What i also noticed , is that you have to work a bit harder with the fz 20 to sometimes get the desired effects than with a slr camera.

The settings i used for this was 1) Exposure time 1/400 , F-Stop 2.8 , iso - 100 and the focal length was 42.8 mm. The settings for the other two was the same except the focal length which was 50. 2 and 26.7 mm . And i used the spot metering mode .

Hope this can also help a bit !
Regards
james