Photography Masterclass Magazine
HOW TO AVOID BLURRY IMAGES
Getting your subject sharp in your images isn’t always as easy as you think – particularly when you’re first starting out on your photography journey. Understanding the reasons why you might be getting blurry shots is crucial, so that you can then take steps to improve sharpness and avoid issues. This article will explain how to do just that!
MOTION BLUR
This is probably the main cause of blurry shots – when either your subject or your camera is moving too much as the shot is being taken. In a lot of cases, motion blur is simple to correct – you just need to use a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action or any camera shake.
Of course, if you use a shutter speed of 1/4000th (for example) you can freeze pretty much any subject but the flip side of this is that you’ll be letting very little light into your shutter. In some cases, using a fast shutter speed and a large aperture / higher ISO might be an acceptable solution.
In most cases though, you’ll want to look to use a shutter speed that’s just fast enough to eliminate any motion blur (or at least reduce it to a level where it’s barely noticeable!). If you’re shooting handheld, don’t try and shoot at anything below 1/60th of a second, unless you have exceptionally steady hands. Shooting at faster speeds will prevent camera shake.
In addition, when you’re using longer and heavier telephoto lenses make sure that you use a shutter speed that is the same or faster than your focal length (e.g. use at least 1/200th of a second with a 200mm lens). When it comes to shooting moving subjects, it really is a case of ‘practice makes perfect’. A bird in flight will likely need an extremely fast speed of 1/1000th and up whereas a sports scene might only require 1/500th.
If you’re shooting non-moving subjects and using longer shutter speeds then you’ll need a tripod to keep your camera steady and prevent camera shake. A good quality tripod is worth investing in as you want something that will keep your camera steady and be sturdy in all conditions.
Of course, none of the above is going to mean anything if you don’t have a good stance to start off with. To ensure sharp photos you need to be fully supporting your own body weight and making sure that you’re sufficiently braced and stable on your feet. If you’re taking low-level shots, try kneeling on one knee. This offers a raised leg as a good balancing point for your arms, which will help to keep your camera steady. Ensuring that you’re well-braced at all times will really help to create a strong and steady frame for your camera.
One final thing to note – if you’re using a DSLR with a mirror, this could cause camera shake and vibrations. You can get round this by using mirror lockup mode or a remote shutter release that allows for smoother shots to be taken.
OUT OF FOCUS BLUR
This is the other main cause of blur, usually occurring when your depth of field simply isn’t large enough. It can also happen if you miss focus entirely.
In the correct situation, using a small depth of field leads to dramatic images where the viewer’s attention is firmly focused on the subject (whilst the background is nicely blurred away). However, using a smaller depth of field does mean that you need to be very precise with your focusing (more on that in a minute) to ensure that a small subject is sharp.
Another common mistake is to use a depth of field that’s too small for your subject.
For instance, even a head and shoulders shot will often need an aperture of around f/4 to f/5.6. And a landscape shot won’t work at all with a small depth of field – you’ll need an aperture of around f/16 to f/22 to get the whole scene sharp and in focus. Choosing the correct depth of field for your shot is absolutely crucial to avoiding blurry images.
Missing focus can occur if you’ve tried to focus too near or too far away or if your autofocus can’t lock onto anything at all. And if you leave your camera’s autofocus system to choose where in an image to focus, you could find that the wrong area of the shot is sharp.
For all these reasons it’s important to learn how to focus your images correctly.
Always make sure that you press the shutter halfway down and wait for your lens to lock focus. In addition, you need to change your AF mode so that you can select which AF point to use yourself. This allows you to move a single or small group of AF points around your image so that you can focus on your subject. Finally, all cameras also have AF modes for stationary or moving subjects – make sure you use the appropriate one (or the automatic mode if your camera has one).
ISO
The higher the ISO you use, the more noise you’ll have in your image (digital grain). Whilst this doesn’t actually give you blur, it does obscure details.
At higher ISOs the noise will also make shots start to look pixelated – the edges of buildings and subjects can start to distort a little. Modern cameras are exceptional at coping with higher ISOs, but it’s always worth using the lowest ISO you can as an image with ISO 100, for example, will always look sharper.
LENSES
This is a source of blur that can actually be rectified by buying new equipment! Budget zoom lenses with variable apertures will struggle – particularly when they’re used at their extremities (such as f/2.8). You may notice slight lens aberrations, such as chromatic aberration or vignetting at the edges of the frame. But even cheaper lenses will have their sweet spots (usually between f/4 and f/8), where images will be crisp and sharp. So, if you can, it’s worth shooting in that range.
IN CONCLUSION
Follow these tips and you should be able to avoid the dreaded blurry images – as well as having a better understanding of what can lead to photographs being soft in the first place.