IS DRIVING ME BONKERS!!! I was totally rockin' the manual mode on my film camera a few years ago...but this digital thing, sheesh! There are so many settings to coordinate and it's making my head spin.

All I want is a nice blurred background with subject in sharp focus...and to not have to use my flash. Is that so much to ask? Evidently, I'm missing something because I'm getting waaaaay too many very, very blurred disasters over here. Is it my cameras inability to cope with natural light? Are SLRs easier to set?

Feeling very frustrated and overwhelmed over here.

i think you are hitting a limitation in your camera.

to get a blurred background and sharply focused subject, no flash...you need a wide aperture (low number f stop.)

your camera goes to 3.something...that's not really that wide open. i get the best bokeh (the blurred bg) with my 1.8 50mm lens...it will stop down to f1.8, letting in a LOT of light so it is considered a fast lens, rarely requiring flash indoors.

an SLR with a fast lens would do what you are seeking.

and...if you know how to use a film SLR manually, you should be fine using a dSLR manually. the only settings that you should be working with are fstop (aperture) and shutter speed...regardless of film or digital. the sensor on a digital camera is a different size than on a film camera (literally 35mm) so there are some adjustments that need to be made in that sense (it took me about a month of using my dSLR to figure out which aperture to use in what setting bc what i'd used all my life in film cameras was not working the same on my dSLR...i'm not sure now that i could do a film SLR w/o a lot of though bc the sensor size does make a difference...)

Well, crackerjacks...at least I won't keep wasting my entire day banging my head on the wall over this. I was afraid of that. Alas...back to the "super saving" for SLR mode. :lol:

Thanks, Tracey!! :)

:lol:

i hope what i said made sense. it's not you ;)