I have been trying to achieve the effect of having an object in focus with the background blurred. From what I've read, a large part of this depends on using a shallow depth of field, by using a large aperture. I set my camera to f2.8. I haven't been able to achieve this blurred background - perhaps my background isn't far enough from the subject that i'm trying to have in focus.

But the question is (just to make sure I'm not attempting the impossible), can I achieve this at all with a point and shoot camera? That is what I'm using - a Fuji Finepix S1500. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, as I'd really like to achieve this effect. Thanks.