I am trying to take some good xmas pictures without overexposing the xmas tree. I cant seem to find the right combo. My family is coming for xmas and I want to take good pics. Ive been using the pup as a model. i'm using 50mm 1.8. and i really want to blur out those tree lights. Thanks ahead of time!
A rule of thumb for getting a nicely blurred background in a shot is this: The distance between subject and background needs to be ten times the distance between yourself and the subject. For example, if you are standing 5 feet from your subject, the background needs to 50 feet behind your subject. Again, this is a rule of thumb sort of thing, and a wider apertures will give you a shallower depth of field, but you're still going to want to shoot with an aperture small enough to keep your subject fully in-focus. This means it's going to be a bit of balancing act and you simply may not have enough room to get the effect you're after, you're just going to have to experiment further.
As is so often the case in photography, "It all depends..."
