So, Your Photos Aren't Sharp? Here's Why.

hey everybody forest here with rocky mountain school of photography and today we're going to take a look at one of the biggest and most common things i see new photographers struggling with and that is the ability to take a sharp photograph now in order to understand this we need to talk a little bit about the difference between sharpness and focus because they're very distinct things i might do an in-depth video in the future about how these two things break down and a little bit more on it but the basics are this taking an in-focus picture means that you successfully focused the camera basically means you know if you're using autofocus you pointed at the subject push the auto focus button or manual focus you spun the focus ring and you were focused on your subject that is in focus and taking an in-focus photo is relatively easy right usually we're using autofocus or something like that and we're trusting the camera to do that so in focus does not necessarily mean sharp there's a lot of things down the line after your initial focus that can lead to taking a photo that's not tack sharp and so today we're going to focus on one of those factors that deal with your sharpness in your image and make your images not look super crispy the most common thing i see that leads to this is shutter speed and it's just one of those things that when you have so many things bouncing around your head as a photographer it's hard to always keep shutter speed in mind so how does shutter speed affect your sharpness in your image and i'm being very careful to not say focus i'm saying sharpness how does shutter speed affect our sharpness well it affects it in two ways the first is you as a photographer as we hold our camera right as i point out there at the background of the video set i have some natural shake to me right even if i brace my camera i put my my lens in my left hand i hold the camera with my right hand and i do everything right there's still some natural shape that i'm gonna have as i'm holding the camera and that shake is gonna get picked up if my shutter speed is too slow and that's the first case the second case is the movement of your subject right if you're shooting something that's not moving like say you're taking a landscape photo you're gonna have a real easy not real easy but much easier time getting a sharp photo with a slower shutter speed than you're gonna have if you're shooting like a portrait image portrait image you can do as good as you can but if your subject is kind of wobbling back and forth or laughing and talking to you which is totally normal you're gonna need a faster shutter speed to stop that action so how do we quantify this well you've probably heard the rule of never use a shutter speed slower than one over the focal length of your lens so as an example this lens is a 35 millimeter so i would never want to use a shutter speed slower than 1 35th of a second i usually say be a little safer than that go to 150th of a second or go you know a half a stop or a stop faster than one over your focal length on top of that that rule only compensates for your movement as the photographer right it's compensating for this movement not the movement of your subject and so you really have to play with it and experiment with it but i'm serious here this is the main reason i see new beginning photographers taking blurry photos it's not the fact of them focusing incorrectly it's not a problem with their camera it's not because they bought a cheap lens it's because in a lot of cases they're using a shutter speed that's too slow for the situation so what i want to do now is take a look at a couple examples and how i would handle them when it comes to shutter speed the first thing i want to say is this this really takes experimentation learning your camera learning what you like to shoot and trial and error and as much as that's a pain to say and hear as a photographer it kind kinda just is the truth depending on what you shoot you're gonna need to go out and try a variety of shutter speeds try faster try slower try different things and see how fast you need to go to get what you like to shoot sharp think about it countering your movement is one thing but if you're a child portrait photographer and you've got kids zipping around doing all kinds of crazy stuff or you're a sports photographer your needs and your requirements to take a sharp photograph when it comes to shutter speed are going to be very different than a landscape photographer with that said here are some benchmarks if you're shooting a stationary subject that's not moving like a landscape and it's not windy outside generally i'm going to go one over the focal length of my lens and then stop down about a stop from there so as an example if i'm at one if i'm using a 24 millimeter lens that would give me 1 24th or 125th of a second i would probably then to be safe stop down to 150th of a second or 1 60 of a second to ensure that i'm going to get something sharp again there's no reason to play with this there's no reason to toy with it there's no reason to monkey with it because we're talking one stop of light so if we really have to cut out that extra stop of light to get a faster shutter speed we're guaranteeing a sharp photograph at the expense of maybe having to increase our iso a stop or potentially open up our aperture i would always say taking a sharp photograph is like paramount because you're going to throw it out if it's not sharp you might as well aim for sharpness at a bare minimum a counter example of that would be a portrait image right if you're just shooting a portrait of an adult they're standing still there's not much to it very very straightforward you're countering your movement and you're countering their natural sway and if they're laughing some people are very animated when they talk you're countering all of that and that's going to be super straightforward as well but it's going to take some guessing and checking i can tell you from experience that generally 1 250th of a second 1 125th of a second if they're moving a little bit less is going to be sufficient in a lot of those cases if however you're shooting someone younger who's running around you're going to be at a 500 or a thousandth of a second in order to do that so with all that said let me tell you what i do when i get to a new situation i remember probably what i'm older now like six years ago i was shooting a basketball game for the university of montana and i got into the stadium and i was like initially you know i was kind of getting everything set learning my settings figuring it all out and i told myself i was like probably in here basketball players aren't moving that much i bet 1 1000 of a second should be sufficient so i set my camera to 1 1000th of a second obviously i watched my basic exposure guide video link in the description to learn where to set my iso and my aperture in that situation but i got everything all set and i started taking some test pictures just of the players warming up immediately as soon as i shot those test shots i zoomed in on the back of the camera and i looked at the ball and the players and i noticed that when they were jumping or doing something really action filled there was a little bit of motion blur things didn't look quite tack sharp so important things here number one i didn't shoot the entirety of the game not check it get home and realize all my photos were blurry i checked then and there and i made changes before the shoot to make sure that i was ready when the action actually started it turned out in that situation that one two thousandth of a second was much more suitable now if you're all thinking in your brain about how this works that meant i cut out a stop of light with my shutter speed so i needed to add light with my aperture or my iso in this case i was already using my widest open aperture so i had to double my iso and i think i went from like 3200 to 6400 iso but you got to think about it that's a high iso but the other alternative is that my photos are blurry so again i really really really really really want you all to understand that taking a sharp photo kind of trumps all of the other worries you might have in photography so use a fast enough shutter speed take the test shots take the time learn it and you really really will get it down one tiny addition i need to make in this whole puzzle is that of stabilization a lot of camera bodies and lenses now have built-in stabilization of some type and different brands call it different things but a lot of lenses and cameras have it these days this stabilization is to counter your movement as the photographer which will allow you if you're shooting a stationary subject to go a little bit slower on your shutter speed than what i've been talking about as an example we use the 150th of a second for a landscape photo a little bit earlier with a 24 millimeter lens if you have stabilization you might be able to go to a 15th or an eighth or a fourth or a half a second in some situations what stabilization will not do is compensate for the subjects movement so it doesn't really help in those situations but if you're shooting something stationary lenses and cameras with stabilization built in are super awesome let me conclude by saying this if you want a safe walking around shutter speed i think 1 125th or 1 250th of a second are good general purpose shutter speeds what i mean by that is if you're not paying attention to holding your camera perfectly and like really like you know digging your arm in and bracing and all that kind of stuff you're going to get a sharp photo at 1 125th or 1 250th even if you're not being super careful and if you are being careful and you're shooting something that's not moving super fast you're also going to get a sharp photo with those shutter speeds so definitely that's a good target to aim for but if you're shooting something a little faster or a little slower feel free to experiment and make changes as necessary again if what i said back there when i was throwing out aperture and iso and all these things was foreign to you check out the basic exposure guide videos that i've linked down the description we walk through exposure from like square one to what you need to know to be super successful in a wide variety of situations you all i hope this was helpful to you really really really it's so important to make sure that you're using a proper shutter speed for the situation if you learned something i would really appreciate you hitting that like button that helps our channel grow if you have a question leave it in the comment section down below lastly hit subscribe down there in the corner and hit that bell icon to stay up to date with future videos it's been a pleasure i hope to see you in a future video happy shooting and i hope that your success rate of sharp images increases with the knowledge you just gained

Channel: Rocky Mountain School of Photography

Views: 8,555

Keywords: sharp photos, basic photography, my photos arent sharp, how to take sharp photos, how to take sharp photos canon, how to take sharper photos, how to take sharp photos sony a7iii, how to take sharp landscape photos, how to take sharp portrait photos, how to take sharp photos dslr, how to get sharp photos, how to get sharp photos every time, why are my photos blurry, why are my photos not sharp, photos always blurry, manual mode blurry photos, blurry photos in manual mode

Id: JY4v0fiZMHA

Length: 10min 13sec (613 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021