Keeping the Background Sharp
Just recalled one of my colleague, who bought a GF1 for a holiday trip, came back and complained to me why the images are blur. After some clarification, it is the background of group photos are blur, not the subject itself (the people in the group photo). The effect of this “blur” is even worse when taking a group picture with a large landmark at the back. Unlike myself, my colleague is a compact camera user upgraded to GF1. Therefore, has very little understanding of technicalities such as shutter speed, DOF, aperture etc. Recalling on my own trip, I also had similar problem when wanting take a photo of my wife with a landmark at the back. I have some understanding of DOF, which thought my to lower down my aperture setting for a sharper background. However, it wasn’t sharp enough even at f5.6, with the subject approximately 2 metres away. So how much lower should I set? So I decided to do a quick test. Short of a test subject, I have the Starbucks bear here (about the size of a h...