How would you set up this shot?

[mamarazzi_squared]

2 kids, 1 dog and flowers. Desired result is the subjects in focus as well as the surrounding flowers, but with the background a bit blurred.

It seems when I try to blur the background with a large aperture, I have trouble getting all of my subjects in focus because of the depth of field. Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Anne

[dtscds]

I am prolly not the best one to try to answer this since there are many others on here with FAR more photo smarts that me.
It is going to be a 'trial-and-error' kind of deal. You are going to need to find the happy spot in the aperture v. distance-from-your-subject equation.
The Depth Of Field Calculator should help narrow things down quite a bit for you.
Good luck.

[doctahjones]

wellll, you could get what the dof is with an online dof calc, then manually focus and measure the distance from the sensor plane to the subjects so that the subjects are a little torwards the back of what's in focus, rather than towards the front. then as long as you had a pretty good distance between the subject and background, the background should still be blurred pretty well.

doctahjones added 0 Minutes and 28 Seconds later...Double Post Merged Below

at least that's the way i think it would work well for you, in theory. i've never actually attemped what i just suggested :)

[dustydirtbiker]

zoom in as far as you can (within reson), step farther back to include all subjects, large f/, and push the button. I think this will work, but most of my knowledge is self-taught... so, it may not. just try it before dealing with an animal and children. ... like a bush, or throw some boxes in the flowery area.

[bondarnes]

The know how for doing this comes from doing it a lot, but ballpark for what you want is probably some where between f4 and f5.6 at 150mm-200mm. There is probably a depth of field preview on your camera, but that doesn't normally help much. I would probably shoot a few test exposures and zoom in on the LCD to check the effect.

[toverman]

It could be a real booger trying to get them all on the same focal plane (lined up the same distance from you), but that's a possibility that would render them all in focus even when you're shooting nearly wide open. That might be something you try in addition to stopping down and zooming in, as suggested above.

[humminboid]

Mama:
The situation you describe has been known to make even men of the clergy utter discouraging words!

doctah and toverman (I just love his technical terms..."a real booger..."!) give good counsel. Trial and error! If you are attempting to pose them, get them in the same plane, or nearly so, compact group. Threaten them with grounding till they are 25!(Not the dog, he wouldn't understand.)

Set 'em up, and shoot fast! Watch the preflash...dogs, cats, children, and my daughter in law will react to that faster than you would ever believe, and close their eyes.

Remember, DOF extends from ~1/3 in front of the subject to ~2/3 behind. Focus accordingly. Good luck!

[mamarazzi_squared]

Thank you for all of the advice! I am glad that there is not a "simple" answer because trying to capture this type of shot (and others like it!) has been been making me CRAZY!

What is the most frustrating is that the shots that are the best from an exposure perspective are the ones where no one is looking at me and the ones where everyone is actually looking at me the dog seems more in focus than the kids (she was in the middle). Ugggh.

Thanks again for the advice -- I know it takes a lot of practice, so the tips are very helpful!