sony hsc-h10. Help please?

[midnightparader]

Hi there, I was looking around for a semi-professional camera lately (only because I can't afford a professional SLR yet want something better than the usual digital compact camera.), and I got the Sony HSC-H10 just 2 days ago.

Sadly, I'm quite a dork at photography though I tried really hard playing around with it. I still can't get pictures that prove it's worth the price difference between this an the regular digital camera. any tips/suggestions? I'm really quite a amateur at this.

I'd love to get pictures that can (for eg) set the focus on one person, and blur the one in the background, or focus on the background person and blur the foreground one. Something like that? I can't really get that. I can only get the focus on the foreground and blur background images one.

Help please?

 

[Simon_84]

would be better if you post in sony sub forum for help.
find out more about the programs 1st by doing a quick glance at the manual.
do read a few times if you have to cos it really helps you to better understand your cam functions.
for the foreground clear background blur effect set your cam to f2.8 in AP or A mode, then do a small test by placing a AA batt and another 1 at 2 arms length distance or more, focus your cam in close up to the 1st batt with the 2nd batt as background if you macro correctly, you should get the correct effect you want.
so when using ppl as subjects, the background person would have to stand further away and still use f2.8 for the foreground person.

for the foreground blur effect, i'm not sure about how to go about...

 

[Rashkae]

The H10 is not a semi-pro camera. For that, you may want to get an H50. The H10 is a compact cam with a strong zoom.

To answer your questions:

1. Both the foreground blur and background blur shots you want to take will require a very shallow depth of field, which can be difficult to achieve on a compact camera. This is why people invest a lot of $$$ in a DSLR and good lenses.

2. The shots you want are still possible with a camera like the H50 if you set it to aperture priority mode, and then there has to be a good distance between the 2 people, several meters at least. Then it's just a matter of setting the focus point.