How to Blurr the background?

[Flick]

I have a Cannon Cybershot S2 IS and am wondering how to blur the background and keep the subject in focus. The camera has a 12x zoom on it. Is there a setting I can put the camera on or is this more of a manual thing I need to set up? Thanks for any help.

[Steve Foss]

Flick, there are several factors that lead to blurred backgrounds.

The three main ones are distance between the subject and background, focal length of the lens and aperture.

Simply put, the longer your focal length (all the way out to 12x), the wider your aperture (smaller f-stop number) and farther the subject is from the background, the more background blur you're going to get. In reality, it's a bit more complicated than that, but if you can put your camera in manual mode and set aperture wide open, use the zoom feature and make sure you've got good distance between the subject and background, you'll have better luck with a blurry background.

[MN Shutterbug]

Just don't expect to get the shallow dof that Steve and others using dslr's get. Advanced point and shoot cameras just are not capable of that. Everything Steve said will help, though. That is the one drawback of these P & S's. This is why I don't attempt flower photos. We just won't obtain the same desired effect. These cameras need more distance between subject and background.

[Flick]

So pretty much I should get a fair distance away from my subject and zoom in as far as possible? Usually the background is a ways away as I'm taking field hunting pictures, so thats usually taken care of.

I'm going to mess with the manual settings to open up the aperture as much as possible.

[MN Shutterbug]

That is correct. The larger aperture limits the amount of the photo that will be in focus. This is why landscape photographers will generally use as small an aperture as possible, thereby keeping as much as the scene as possible in focus. Remember, the smaller the number, the larger the aperture. Also, when using a longer focal length, everything appears to be more spread out or less condensed. This is one of the reasons why landscape photographers favor the wide angle lens. Much more of the shot will be in focus.