Actually, sometimes we want to control the final out come of our photography. Sure, with even the pointiest point and shoot digital zoom camera, there might come an occasion when you really want what you're seeing to show in your final image. The beautiful orchid behind the your daughter's smiling face for example. Here is where understanding depth of field, or the portion of the scene that stays in focus, comes in handy.
Full of inspiration from an Ansel Adams Photograph, grab hold to your trusty digital light box, and kit lens and go into your settings menu. Hopefully, your camera has programmable aperture and shutter settings. If you're using a fully automatic "point and shoot" camera, you can get similar results using the "portrait" or "landscape" settings. Portrait giving you a sharp foreground blurred background, while landscape gives you an overall sharp background and foreground.
Looking at your subject, determine how you want it to look or relate to the entire scene. If you want your subject to be in focus while the background in blurred, you'll want to have an aperture setting around f2.8, with a shutter speed of 1/125 a sec. This is good setting to start with especially if you're in a moderately lit environment. All Digital SLRs and most super zoom presume best digital camera come with a built in exposure meter. Should you camera indicate your image is either over or under exposed, try adjusting the speed or shutter setting instead of the aperture setting.
For landscape photography, you'll want to start with an aperture setting of F8.0. This is a good aperture setting to start with because it's ideal for sunny outdoor shots, and brightly lit scenes. One of the tricks to landscape photography is having a focal distance that allows you to keep what's closest to you in focus while the background remains in focus as well. That is why most point and shoot instant best digital camera have a 35mm or a 24mm lens. These lenses have such a short focal range that any subject past the length of your arm will probably be in focus. Point and shoot. Your cameras lens will most likely have a chart of some sort with the optimal focal distances for your lens setting in relationship to the distance of your subject.
