Blurring the background with digital.

It's not entirely true. With compact digital cameras that have very small sensors, it's almost impossible, because you get a very large depth of field as a result of the small sensor size. With digital SLRs, it's easier, because most of them have larger sensors, but still not as large as a 35mm film frame.

Read the photo.net article Depth of Field and Digital for all the details...

Yes, although you need to excersize some skill and good judgement... it's very easy to get some really ugly results.

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Photoshopped:

My mistake... I thought you were asking about doing background blur in photoshop.
To answer your question, yes, you can certainly get background blur with a digital SLR:

Art, a DSLR works just like an SLR in terms of out of focus background/foreground and bokeh. Generally speaking a good lens gives good bokeh on a DSLR as it does on an SLR (although the software processing may be better or worse depending on camera make). The only thing to bear in mind is that despite most DSLR sensors having a 'crop' factor of 1.6 or thereabouts, the lens still has the same DOF. So using a 35mm lens gives you a 50mm film equivalent, but still with the same DOF as a 35mm lens. In theory therefore it is even more important to go for faster lenses to give you more DOF adjustment with a DSLR, but in general practice you may find that it makes little difference.

yeah, i have a 50 mm 1.8 lens that i use a lot on my digital rebel and the bokeh is almost identical to film. Just put the aperture at 1.8 and you'll be lucky to get a few inches of in focus space at about 10 ft distance. It's really amazing.

this was at F3.5 1/125 and the background is a cookie sheet that is 6" behind the foreground.

You can manage surprisingly good depth of field blurring with PS after the fact, even if your camera isn't worth the wrist strap attached to it.

The top picture I've attached was taken on a 1.3 MPixel fixed focus Fuji. I bought it for $20. This camera has a massive depth of field. The picture below is what it looks like after a little post-production work.

In terms of appearance and accuracy, CS's 'Lens blur' is rivaled by none. I'd wager, in skilled application, even a pro wouldn't be able to tell from the real thing. But as you can see, I was lazy. Subjects with complex edges are a total pain the ass to mask off. I didn't care enough about the tree to bother with the branches, so I said the hell with it. This is why it's far more efficient to do it right the first time.

Anyway, the result is still worth printing, and it should give you an idea what you can pull off.

DI

Well, it seems that the digital slr can achieve the same amount of DOF as a film cam according to your comments. A Canon 10D is what i'm thinking of getting, not sure which lens yet. Just to make sure, will it be able to blur a portrait background like this one is? Thanks

>> A Canon 10D is what i'm thinking of getting, not sure which lens yet. Just to make sure, will it be able to blur a portrait background like this one is? <<

Yes. The 10D's sensor is much larger than those in compact digicams. Getting shallow depth-of-field isn't a problem. Here's a photo taken with the 10D & 100mm f/2.0 lens at f/2.8.

-Dave-

One of the new features of Photoshop 8 is a blur tool called Focus Blur, which I imagine is their way of helping Digital pictures achieve better DOF.

The "huge DOF" type problems with digital are only on cameras that have small sensors combined with extremely short focal length lenses.

When you read about the "35mm equivalent" focal length range of a P&S digital lens, remember that the actual focal lengths are much much shorter (for instance, according to dpreview.com, the Canon Powershot Pro 70 has the "35mm equivalent" of 28 -72mm, but the lens is actually 6-15mm). Impossible to get a good background blur with such short focal lengths.

As everyone else has pointed out, this is not an issue with a DSLR.