Open Wide!
As beautiful as wildflowers may be, their backgrounds are typically very distracting. Using a very large aperture can make backgrounds into big blobs of color such as with this tiny Fleabane. It can even make hot spots somewhat pleasing. So next time you capture a flower, open wide! (Canon 70-200 (f/4 non IS) Left image at f/13. Right at f/4)
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Great! example! Thank you for the excellent tip. Too bad my 10XS only goes to f8. 🙁
Thanks Carol! I’m wondering if you might have misunderstood, though. Shooting Wide Open means choosing a small f/number such as f/2.8 or lower. These numbers equal large aperture openings which typically make backgrounds very soft.
Unfortunately, compact camera lenses are so small that the smallest number is still a fairly small opening. So even though your camera has an f/2.8 opening, it’s still much smaller than the same number on an SLR. This is why compact cameras can’t achieve the super soft backgrounds that an SLR can. Bummer!