I hear this from so many photographers! In fact, I’d say this is the #1 issue people encounter. The solution is multi-faceted and I’ll touch on the key factors you, as the photographer, must keep in mind if you want consistently sharp images.

• Focus
  It is critically important to correctly focus on what is most important in your image. Whether it is an animal or bird in the trees in a wildlife shot, or someone’s eyes in a portrait. All current generation cameras offer automatic focus features, but you’ll need to make sure you really know how to use those features appropriately. A poor setting choice will lead to poor results.
  • WHERE to focus: You may not want the camera to simply automatically decide where to focus. Depending on your camera’s capabilities, that might even lead to terrible results. You might need to choose single point focus which allows you to point at exactly where you want the camera to automatically focus, or if you’re shooting portraits and your camera has an eye-detection feature, you could turn that on. Single point focus is pretty universal across all cameras, and that provides the greatest degree of control when automatic focusing.
  • WHEN to focus: Also, consider whether you want the camera to focus once, or continually focusing up until the shutter fires. For relatively static scenarios where there is not much movement, stick with One-Shot focusing (Canon) or AF-S (Nikon,Sony,…). For active scenes like an animal running or a bird in flight, use AI-Servo (Canon) or AF-C (Nikon,Sony,…)
    
• Aperture
  Your choice of aperture value affects the “depth of field” (range that appears in focus). While this is not a focus setting, it is still very important. The higher the f/number, the greater the depth of field. A poor choice for the aperture value could lead to problems with part of the image not being in focus. Let’s say you photograph a group of people. If they are not all the exact same distance from the camera, you need to make sure you choose a high f/number like f/8 or even higher (just depends on how far their distance varies). Photographers often forget about this, and this leads to serious problems.
  • Then there is one more issue related to depth of field and focusing. For higher depth-of-field shots, when you choose a higher f/stop you can also achieve better results by not focusing on the foreground or the background, but instead focus on something in between. This technique is called “hyper-focal focusing.”
    
• Shutter Speed
  Sometimes a blurry photograph has nothing to do with a focus or depth of field issue. It might be an issue where the shutter speed was simply too slow to freeze motion of the subject, or freeze any camera vibration that is problematic at slower shutter speeds.
  • Handheld Shots: A general rule of thumb is to keep the shutter speed at least 1 / focal length to ensure you minimize hand vibration blur. So if you are shooting at 200mm, make sure the shutter speeds are at least 1/200th or higher. Technically you would need to take into account your camera’s sensor crop factor that affects the effective focal length of the lens. At least this rule gets you in the ballpark of sufficient shutter speeds. When in doubt, err on the side of faster shutter speeds. It can really make a difference.
  • Action Shots: When there is movement of different elements within a scene, you might need to choose even faster shutter speeds. For example photographing birds in flight or an animal or person running, you might want shutter speeds in the 1/1000th or faster range.
    
• Image Stabilization
  This feature, offered by many different camera manufacturers under different names (Image Stabilization, Vibration Reduction, Vibration Compensation, Optical Steady Shot,…), is designed to help eliminate motion blur caused by movement in hand-held shots, allowing you to break that 1 / focal length rule by a bit. The features vary depending on the make and model of camera and lenses you are using, but are quite helpful. I most definitely highly recommend taking advantage of this feature in hand-held photography!
  
• Using a Tripod
  Another way you can stabilize your camera is to use a tripod. It won’t eliminate motion blur in moving subject, but at least it will eliminate or reduce blur caused by camera movement. There are still some situations you must be mindful of.
  • When Image Stabilization is a Problem
    Sometimes when your camera is mounted on a tripod that otherwise-wonderful image stabilization feature actual can cause a problem in some scenarios and actually introduce some vibration. So the general rule is to turn off image stabilization when using a tripod. Otherwise it could conceivably introduce a slight amount of motion blur.
  • Unstable Tripod
    There are several ways your tripod might not be as stable as you’d like. Let’s say you have the tripod on a wooden deck, that you are also standing on. You can introduce movement that might cause some motion blur, simply by moving around, so stay very still. Or if you accidentally bump the tripod when shooting, that can cause a problem. Or maybe one of the legs is not latched securely and the leg slides down ever so slowly while you are shooting, that could also cause a problem (hey, I’ve seen it happen).
  • DSLR’s Have Mirrors
    There is one other factor that is more rare but can cause a problem. It’s the mirror inside a DSLR. You mirrorless camera owners don’t have to worry about this. Inside a DSLR, when the shutter fires, the mirror slaps up very quickly to get out of the way, for the shutter to open. That action causes a very tiny amount of vibration right when the shutter fires. Even if you have the tripod on very secure ground, there is always a slight possibility that this tiny vibration can hurt image sharpness. Some DSLR’s support a “mirror lockup” or “mirror up” mode. Check your camera user manual for more information. This usually is only a problem in rare cases where you are using a long lens (400mm+) and a moderately slow shutter speed (1/4th – 1/60th ish).

I know this sounds like a lot to think about, because it is! With practice, this is not really all that hard. I cover these topics in my various Photography Essentials classes and in my book “30 Practical Tips for Better Photographs” available on Amazon.

I hope this helps. Now go out and create those sharp images you’ve been wanting to create!

Kevin

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Kevin's book "30 Practical Tips for Better Photographs" is available in print and on Kindle devices!