How to take a photo with blurred background?

[D13H4RD2L1V3]

Get as close as possible to your subject and make sure it's in focus.

The 1/2.6" sensor plus f/1.7 aperture should help make it blurry.

 

[digitalbreak]

Didn't the HTC M8 have this feature? I think it was called something like "Blur"?

M8 has/had dual lens - The first really! But it was too early for such a design during those years!

 

[digitalbreak]

Below are some of my shots I had taken with focusing closer on the object. You can see the blurry background, but nothing closer to portrait or selective focus modes!

 

[LeoRex]

Well... the problem with phones is that ANY phone, even the iPhone 7+'s slick portrait mode... it relies heavily on software to give you the final image. Under ideal conditions, you'll get the bokeh effect similar to a dedicated camera, but ... 'under ideal conditions' is the key thing. The phone is stitching things together then starts making guesses (sometimes educated) on what to blur and what not to blur... and most of the time, there are spots in the picture that get totally borked... hair gets blurred, the background seen through the crook of an arm remains in focus, etc.

Now, you CAN get those wonderfully blurred pictures from a phone, but you are limited... you need to be VERY close to the subject.... so portraits aren't in the cards... here's a pic I took with my G6 last week.

 

[D13H4RD2L1V3]

Well... the problem with phones is that ANY phone, even the iPhone 7+'s slick portrait mode... it relies heavily on software to give you the final image. Under ideal conditions, you'll get the bokeh effect similar to a dedicated camera, but ... 'under ideal conditions' is the key thing. The phone is stitching things together then starts making guesses (sometimes educated) on what to blur and what not to blur... and most of the time, there are spots in the picture that get totally borked... hair gets blurred, the background seen through the crook of an arm remains in focus, etc.

Now, you CAN get those wonderfully blurred pictures from a phone, but you are limited... you need to be VERY close to the subject.... so portraits aren't in the cards... here's a pic I took with my G6 last week.

View attachment 264995

You are effectively limited by the sensor size.

Yes, the aperture f-stop rivals that of fast primes you'd find on an interchangeable lens camera on paper, but remember that these cameras also have much larger sensors, and lens size scales up with sensor size.

As a result, on an actual camera, you can get super-creamy bokeh, while on a smartphone, you can definitely still get bokeh, but it's more limited.

For instance, this is the best I can get out of the Moto Z

Compare that to the maximum aperture of f/1.4 on the Sigma lens attached to my Sony a6000

 

[LeoRex]

Yes, the aperture f-stop rivals that of fast primes you'd find on an interchangeable lens camera

Well... I wouldn't even bother attempting to compare anything optically on a phone with something on a DSLR... f-stop, for instance... It's like saying my lawn mower is as fast as a Ferrari because their wheels have the same number of spokes. The number alone is meaningless without context.

Mobile photography has made massive leaps and bounds in only a few short years, but those leaps and bounds are basically due to the fact that mobile processing power has increased by several orders of magnitude. But you can't fake optics... you got a wee little sensor sitting behind a wee little lens and that lets in a wee bit of light... and that tiny little box these sensors are squished into hasn't changed much over the last 10 years. From an optical point of view, we're maxed out... that's why OEMs are trying out things like dual sensors.

(ok, we've tack'd a bit hard to port here)

 

[D13H4RD2L1V3]

Well... I wouldn't even bother attempting to compare anything optically on a phone with something on a DSLR... f-stop, for instance... It's like saying my lawn mower is as fast as a Ferrari because their wheels have the same number of spokes. The number alone is meaningless without context.

Mobile photography has made massive leaps and bounds in only a few short years, but those leaps and bounds are basically due to the fact that mobile processing power has increased by several orders of magnitude. But you can't fake optics... you got a wee little sensor sitting behind a wee little lens and that lets in a wee bit of light... and that tiny little box these sensors are squished into hasn't changed much over the last 10 years. From an optical point of view, we're maxed out... that's why OEMs are trying out things like dual sensors.

(ok, we've tack'd a bit hard to port here)

Precisely why I had to bold the “on-paper” part.

I’ve seen far too many times people making assumptions just based on that f-stop number.