Professional photographer Aaron Grubb over at Improve Photography is explaining the most common reasons why your photos do not turn out as sharp as you’d like them to.
These things are really easy to fix, as long as you know what’s causing the blurriness. With simple camera setting adjustments your images will get a much more professional look.
MISSED FOCUS
Depending on the focus mode you use and the way you use it, you may just be missing focus. This means either your camera is focusing on the background or the wrong subject, or it is just slightly missing. This is sometimes user error, but is sometimes the camera’s fault, especially in low light. For example, if you are taking a picture of a person and the focus is on their nose or hair and their eyes are slightly out of focus, it can ruin the picture. Try using only one focus point at a time and use that point to focus on one of their eyes. You might have to reference your manual to figure out how to change focus modes and points.
SLOW SHUTTER SPEED
The first thing I look at, when I take a blurry picture, is my shutter speed. If it is too slow, a couple of things could happen. The first thing is what we call, “camera shake”. It happens because your hands don’t actually stay perfectly still when you take a picture. You just don’t see evidence of it in pictures until your shutter speed gets too low. Practicing better hand-holding technique can improve this problem and so can image stabilization. No matter how good your image stabilization is, your shutter speed still needs to be fast enough to capture the action. In the same way your unsteady hand can cause camera shake, a moving subject can become blurry when your shutter speed is too low.
SHALLOW DEPTH OF FIELD
If you’re using a ‘long’ lens or a prime lens with a wide aperture, you might be dealing with a shallower depth of field than you’re use to. This simply means that there is less in focus, so you have to be careful. After you focus, you might just barely move forward or backward or your subject might move forward or backward, causing them to be slightly out of focus. You might try narrowing down your aperture (an increase in the f-number). For example, if you bought a 35mm or 50mm f1.8, then instead of shooting wide open at 1.8, try shooting at 2.8 first and see if that helps. Side note: if you set your aperture to a high f-number, this could also be a problem. Many lenses are softer at narrower apertures (think f16 and higher).
Read the full article with even more tips over at Improve Photography.
Source: Improve Photography
