The important part is that you understand why your pictures are blurry

so you can fix them.

So today Tony and I are going to talk about eight reasons that your photos are

blurry and how to fix them.

The first problem

is that your pictures are blurry all over with a bit of motion

to them.

Your problem is probably camera shake. To fix camera shake, one thing you should

understand is the reciprocal rule.

That's just a fancy shmancy way of saying that your shutter speed should be

greater than your focal length. So if you're shooting at 50 millimeters, for

example, your shutter speed should be 1/50th or greater. An easy way to deal

with this is to switch your camera to shutter priority mode.

Make sure that your shutter speed is your focal length or greater and then

put your camera into auto ISO mode and that should eliminate camera shake.

Another way to eliminate camera shake is to use image stabilization or you can

work on your your technique with holding the camera. You can prop your arms up

against your body and that will help eliminate camera shake.

Or you could use a tripod. If you're still having problems with camera shake

and you're in a situation where you just can't fail,

maybe you're taking pictures of your kids blowing out their birthday candles.

You can just put your camera to auto mode and that should take care of it for

you.

The second most common problem is motion blur. With motion blur your subject isn't

holding completely still and you kind of see their movement in the picture.

As you can see still parts of the picture sharp but the subject itself is

blurry.

This is really easy to fix. Just put your camera into shutter priority mode and

pick a shutter speed that's fast enough to freeze the motion. With people,

like this,

1/60th is usually good. If they're playing sports, 1/250th or 1/500th. And

wildlife, you want to be at 1/1000th or 1/2000th. So i'll bump

this up to 1/250th because Chelsea was moving pretty fast and we'll take

another picture.

I'm a constant sport.

If your problem is that the part of your photo that you

focused on is in focus, but the rest of your photo including the background is

blurry, you probably just have a shallow depth of field.

That's an easy fix

you just need to raise your aperture number. So if you have a low f-stop

number like f/1.8, raise it to f/5.6 or something higher.

It's a common problem when people buy a new lens like a new 50 millimeter f/1.8,

because they're not used to working with shallow depth of field. It's one of the

benefits of those lenses, but it's also one of the challenges.

Another common problem is missed focus. Especially when you're using a lens with

shallow depth of field, cameras aren't perfect and they often miss focus.

let's take a look at what happens

To make sure you nail the focus every time, use a single small focus point. And if

you're shooting people,

place it on their closest eye. Also be sure to take lots of pictures and refocus,

because no camera gets focus perfect a hundred percent of the time.

So let's try that again.

Another way to solve it is to use a higher f-stop

number, just like you wanted to increase your depth of field.

Now let's talk about air quality. We'll have to head outside for this and it's

pretty cold,

so we're going to bundle up.

Alright, so this will be a good example of what we-

oh my gosh it's way too cold out here.

All right we're ready let's go.

Alright, so the farther your subject is from you the more haze and humidity and

all that other air garbage there is between you and your subject. Especially

if it's a hazy or foggy day, a subject that's far away it is going to appear slightly

out of focus or not sharp.

So I'll take a picture of Tony not too far away with this 50 millimeter lens

to show you how it looks.

So it looks nice and clear, he's not so far away.

So Tony is going to move far away and I'm going to keep him the same size in

the frame, but use

ah, this monster. Ok, so now Tony is the same size in the frame but very far away

so let's see what happens.

What about light quality? That could be your problem.

The softer the light, the softer your picture. If you have hard light your picture will

be sharper but you probably won't want that for a portrait.

It is good for wildlife pictures, though. One more thing that can cause problems

is focusing systems that are misaligned just a little bit.

people often blame their focusing problems on the camera, but it's very

rarely the problem. If you check chapter 5 in Stunning Digital Photography, we

walk you through the entire process of troubleshooting. And I know what you're

thinking, this video is great how do I learn more from you two?

We wrote a whole book, 9 hours of video plus a community that will help you out

with problems like these.

So you think we're great and you want to support us by our book, Stunning Digital

Photography. And don't forget to click subscribe for more free videos and

please click like to share with your friends.

Thanks so much.