focusing in digital photography?

[Legolas]

when taking a shot i want to focus only on the face and blur the background, it worked once and got amazing photos but i did not know how (no software of course)
I have fuji af10 (6.3 MP)
any ideas please

[Pooky]

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3286/2294708762_09f92a19f1_o.jpg

You have to the set the aperture as LARGE as possible.

Left, Canon 50 mm f 1.8 at 1.8, right at 5.6.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2170/2293925253_c425453b61_b.jpg

Click on it and it gets a little larger.

[frediwhite@verizon.net]

You want to use a wide open F-stop; that shortens the depth of field and blurs the background. Especially good for portraits.

You can also do that with a longer lens, which gets you away from the subject a little; some people don't like the camera too close. The longer lens lets you stop down a little.

Of course you adjust the shutter accordingly. On a modern digital camera the shutter priority setting takes care of that automatically when you choose a fast shutter speed. Or you can set the F-stop manually and use aperture priority.

Outdoors it's nice to put the light behind the subject - so she doesn't squint - and fill the face shadows with flash. Nice halo effect, maybe.

[valarie]

You need to set your aperture to as small as possible. : )

[fhotoace]

The term is Bokeh and is usually produced by adjustable cameras (35mm SLR's, DSLR's and medium format cameras) using fast, long lenses.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/bokeh.htm

If your camera has an aperture priority feature, you can use that with the zoom out at its longest optical setting.