If you’ve seen my videos for Portrait Photography, you know that what you want is to use the Aperture Value or the Aperture Priority Mode.

In my case, I have a Canon so I’ll just change this mode dial to AV. The smaller pocket size cameras won’t have this mode but you’ll have a Portrait Mode.

Now, in the AV Mode, you can set your Aperture and you know that in order to get the shallow depth of field that you want with portraits, you’re going to want to use a very large Aperture which means using something like F2.8.

Now, if I zoom in, you’ll notice that my F number, my Aperture jumps up to F4.1. And I can’t move this any larger. I can’t make this F2.8 again. And the reason is because this lens and these numbers are on every lens you’ll find on every camera. You’ll see in the front of the lens. Mine says 1 x 2.8 to 4.1 which means in the wide angle I can achieve an F2.8 Aperture but as I zoom in, the Aperture is forced to close a bit and the widest Aperture is F4.1.

Different lenses will have different figures. Some high-end lenses made for DSLR cameras will have 1 x 2.8 which means at any focal length you can achieve 2.8 but these are very, very expensive lenses.

So, with digital cameras, you’ll always have some kind of figure F2.8 or F2.0 to something else, 4.1, 5.6. It really depends on the lens and the focal length of that lens.

So, in this case when I’ve zoomed in, the widest Aperture is 4.1. And therefore my background won’t be quite as blurry so what I would recommend doing is actually zooming back, opening up the Aperture to F2.8. I’m trying to physically step closer. I know sometimes that’s not possible. And then you’ll just have to zoom in and deal with it but if you can then you want to zoom out. You may not want to zoom out all the way, you can zoom in a little bit and I can do F3.2 if I zoom it a little bit. That’s still better than 4.1. And now I’ll just step closer and get that nice shallow depth of field with the background very blurry and my subject in sharp focus just the way a portrait should be.

To find out much more about digital photography and your digital camera, go to LBGuides.com.