Beginner Achieving bokeh/depth of field with a D5300

[jools182]

Hi

I used my camera for the first time last weekend

I am a complete newbie to dslr photography, and I was just trying to learn as I go with the camera

I have a D5300 with the standard kit lens

A few shots I was trying to achieve bokeh type effects, but I was struggling

I tried full manual mode and just defocused the lens with the f-stop on the lowest number:



I also tried the no flash mode and focused on a closer object



Can anyone give me any tips on achieving better results?

I am a total beginner so I hope you'll bear with me if I don't understand any technicalities

 

[woof woof]

They look slightly out of focus to me...

Anyway...

Use a wide aperture, a longer zoom length if you can and maybe reduce your camera to subject distance and / or move the subject further from the background for best effect.

 

[Kodiak Qc]

Use a wide aperture, a longer zoom length if you can and maybe reduce your camera to subject distance and / or move the subject further from the background for best effect.

•
+1

 

[ah5168]

To create shallow depth of field effects use your widest aperture, probably f/3.5 with your lens and focus on something close to the camera, the background will then be out of focus. As a rule of thumb the closer the foreground subject is to the camera the more the background is going to be out of focus. The result is also effected by how much you zoom in a wide setting say 18mm will have less out of focus effects than say 50mm.

Here I used 24mm and f/5 and focused on the door handle which was about 500mm away.

 

[Kodiak Qc]

•
There are two aspects that cumulate their effects for SDoF:
one aspect is gear dependent, the other condition dependent
but not the quality, only the effect. The quality is only number
of blades dependent.

The gear dependent are the focal length (the longer the better)
and the aperture (the wider the better) as the condition depen-
dent are the distance subject to BG (the greater the better), the
distance sensor to subject (the shorter the better).