Settings to Achieve a Blurred Background

chestnutbelle

I have the 35mm f/1.8g on my D3100 and I want to take pictures of my kids in front of the christmas tree at night. Which settings should I use (ISO and shutter speed) to blur the background?

narsibvl

This is something you have to try on your own. The only thing you need to know is that a bigger aperture lends to a shallow dept of field and that the F-Stop number is inversely proportional to the aperture size. So first set the camera to aperture priority. Then set the aperture to F4 and take a picture; check to see if the background is blurry enough. If it's not you could either move closer to the subject or decrease the aperture to F2.8 or F1.8. Hope this is useful.