Learning Lumix

How to Do the Blurry Portrait Method

Chris Gampat
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10/30/2023
4 Mins read
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Panasonic s5 ii motion portrait with Enji select 3.51-25s800

There’s a great trend going around right now involving an undoing of all the things that photographers have been telling you to do in the first place. It’s got to do with the sharpness in a portrait. Sure, with face detection and all that stuff, it’s easy to do. But getting intentional blur in a portrait is something very special. There are a few ways to do it, and here, we’re going to teach you how your LUMIX S5II can help you make a beautiful blurry portrait.

This piece is presented in partnership with Panasonic Lumix. We’ve independently and ethically reviewed all the products in this post already without sponsorship. And we worked with them to recommend a few key gems to you. Want one? Check the Lumix S5II on Amazon.

Recommended Gear for Shooting a Blurry Portrait

To do this special method, we recommend you use the following items:

  • LUMIX S5 II: With its 24MP full frame sensor and loads of features, this camera will give you everything you need. For the record too, it also has very good image stabilization. So at times, you may even need to really work against it because of just how good it is.
  • Panasonic 50mm f1.8 Lumix S: This lens is versatile and mimics how the human eye sees for many photographers. Use this for a wider portrait.
  • Panasonic 85mm f1.8 Lumix S: The traditional portrait focal length. Use this for a tighter portrait.
  • Panasonic 20-60mm Lumix S: A kit lens, but not an ordinary one at all. This is one of the best we’ve used and it’s only gotten better with time.

These are the main items we think photographers should use to get a blurry portrait. Though honestly, lots of cameras can do this, not many can do this method with little use of post-production. The LUMIX S5II has features like Real Time LUT, that lets you more or less add presets to a camera for you to apply at real time on a photograph. Typically all you need to do after that is choose a white balance and you’ll be all set.

It’s also lightweight, versatile, weather resistant, and has the autofocus to back up the performance. With firmware updates, it’s only gotten better.

With Off-Camera Lighting

To do the blurry portrait method using off-camera lighting, you’ll need to connect a flash to your camera using something like a radio transmitter. In the LUMIX S5II’s menus, you then can choose to set the flash to what’s called second curtain. Second curtain flash is a method that uses your camera’s flash and the shutter to make a creative effect. Typically, a flash fires with the first shutter curtain. But with second curtain, the results are totally different.

Here’s some background from a tutorial we did a while back:

After setting up your flash, we recommend keeping it in TTL mode just to make it easier. Make sure you’ve got a lens that can give the aperture reading to the camera. Then have your ISO set to your desired effect depending on the environment you’re shooting in. Start at 1/125th of a second, then ask your subject to move around within a contained area that the flash is hitting. Shoot a quick photo.

When you’re doing second curtain flash and the blurry portrait method, you’ll have to tell your subject to move around quite a bit. Then the LUMIX S5II will capture a bit of sharpness and intentional movement blur at the same time. It’s a lot of fun and best done when combined with a pretty shallow depth of field.

Our overall recommended settings:

  • Daylight white balance
  • 1/125th of a second, and then slow down the shutter speed from there.
  • f1.8 or f2.8 — shoot between these two apertures.
  • ISO 400: from working with flash for a decade and a half, we can tell you to use this as a starting point.
  • Continuous autofocus: the Lumix S5 II uses phase detection autofocus to keep your subject in focus.
  • Human body or face and eye detection: this all depends on your framing in the scene.

This is a method that cannot be done with constant lighting. The effect can come close, but with second curtain flash you’ll balance both sharpness and blur for a blurry portrait.

With Constant Lighting Without Off-Camera Lighting

If you’re too nervous to work with a flash, then this can also be done using LEDs or natural lighting. Just work with a low ISO, a slow shutter speed, and shallow aperture. Have your subject move around and then capture them as they move.

The alternative method is a pretty fun one. Try this:

  • Focus the camera on your subject’s face
  • Set your shutter speed to 1/15
  • Set your ISO to whatever it needs to be
  • Set your aperture to around f2
  • Pivot the camera up slightly so the framing changes and places your subject a bit below where you originally had them
  • Pull the camera down, or pivot it down. As you do this, shoot the photo. The intentional camera movement will create a blurry portrait that you’re absolutely going to love.

This method is an evolution of the in-camera paintings that photographers have made for years. It was also well known in the film days as a method that photographers often shunned. But these days, it’s applauded because of the unique beauty that it can help give to an image.

blurry portrait lighting lumix lumix s5ii panasonic lumix panasonic lumix s5ii portrait
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.