Why are my pictures blurry?

Camera shake, slow shutter speeds, and a moving subject are all sources of blurry photos. What can you do about it? If you own a DSLR, stop letting the camera decide what settings to use- get that thing out of auto and learn to shoot manual. Show him who's boss. We'll talk manual mode another day.

-Camera shake is exactly what it sounds like. Shaky hands? If you can't get your shutter speed high enough to compensate then break out the tripod.

-Low shutter speeds will cause blur. Most of the time you'll see this with dim lighting and no flash. Your camera is leaving the shutter open longer in attempt to gather more light, so it's very sensitive to any movement. Always shoot with a shutter speed higher than the length of your lens. Or, move to an area with better lighting and get out the tripod again.

-Your kids won't be still because grandma fed them junk food and brought them home that way as payback for all the gray hairs you gave her growing up. Back to the subject. Tripods won't help in that situation. Nothing you can do here unless you are shooting with a fast shutter speed. It's gonna take at least 1/250th to freeze motion- I prefer 1/500th. This applies to your kid's soccer game equally well. Again, you have to be the boss of the camera. Spending all that money on a DSLR and leaving it on auto isn't going to give you what you were looking for when you wrote the check. The "your camera takes good pictures" article comes to mind. Please read it.


Sometimes blur is intentional and fun. I took this at night in December of 2009 with my older camera. And I like it.