I have not found a blur control or anything similar.
I guess using the zoom will help with a shallow dept of field for portrait pictures but I was wondering how my landscape/scenery pictures will be different. I guess it is because the camera has no near item to focus on and focus locks on infinity? I did see that there is a setting to take the auto focus off so that it is fixed focus but am I right in thinking that pointing at hills and mountains will cause the same thing to happen so that everything in the picture is in focus?

Many thanks

Hi, I am new to photography and have bought the Pentax X5. I have been reading posts about only having the choice of 2 aperture setting on this camera. From what I have generally read, I thought that portrait mode would select a larger aperture to blur the back ground and landscape mode would have a smaller aperture for everything to be in focus. It seems that on this camera the same aperture is selected whether portait or landscape modes. Does this mean that the only difference in these modes is the colour tone which the manual refers to. I am really struggling to understand this camera. Although it is easy to point and shoot and get a good picture, I am wondering if there really are any manual settings of any use on it. Does anyone know the best settings for portait photography if you want shallow depth of field? Manual mode gives you the same aperture setting as you would get using portait mode and landscape/scenery mode. Confused. Any help of comments would be much appreciated. (in case you are not familiar with the camera, it does not have aperture priority or shutter priority modes)