Aperature Priority Help, Noob

[Sweener88]

Hey everyone. Ok iv throughly read my manual for my new fuji S5200 but im still having problems trying to figure out how to shoot with aperature priority. i want my subject to be clear but i want the background to be blurred. i cant figure out the best way to do this turning the aperature from 3.2 to 8.
Also for Shutter priority, if i want to capture say drops of water coming from a waterfall, the higher the speed the more light i need? my camera goes up to 1000 but the images (parts not effected by flash)are darker using this.

 

[jlcharles]

The lower the aperture, the shallower the depth of field, the more blurring in your photo. Having said that, it is hard to get shallow depth of field with a P&S due to the small sensor they use. One way to help would be to separate your subject from the background more.

 

[ChrisA]

use f/3.8 and your longest telephoto zoom setting and then step back. It this is not enough blur for you you can use Photoshop (or the like) to get the effect Select the background and apply a Gaussian blur filter to it.

To really get this effect you need a camera with a larger frame size and a lens that opens up to wider then f/3.5