Beginner needs basic help! Photos are blury :(, Help Very frustated!

[4hotography]

Hi guys i hope somebody can help me. I have a Sony A380 (beginners camera they say), with a standard lens. I have taken some great photos with it however most of my photos if their indoors come out very horrible and blury.

Today i was taking some photos... indoors, the lighting was good, however my photos still come out very wrong. Out of 480 pictures over 400 pictures came out very blury and distorted.

Steady-shot is on, my hands were very still, flash was off as i like photos without flash - natural colour, tried different iso settings. I sometimes zoomed in with the lens and had tried different settings but to no avail. I also used the auto setting but nothing was working.. i was really frustrated.

Below are some examples which i took today, very dissapointed.









The pictures below show movement, when people are clapping or moving it just ruins the entire photo.








All the pictures i have taken outside with natural light have come out very good as i expected. The picture below wasnt outside but had enough lighting, the focus on the gentleman on the right is good, but the child moving away on the bottom right is blurred. How can i prevent this from happening all the time?




Below is a reasonably good picture ive taken.




I noticed the picture quality is only determined by the amount of lighting coming into the lens? If there is a lot of light coming into the lens the picture quality is good, its even better if im taking photos outside. However when i try taking photos with flash on, the picture dosent blur, but as you know having flash on takes away that natural colour which i dont want, hence i use it more often without flash.


I would really appreciate your help guys, your advice would be priceless on how i can avoid the problems im having as demonstrated above when it comes to taking photos indoors.

 

[j-digg]

I noticed the picture quality is only determined by the amount of lighting coming into the lens? If there is a lot of light coming into the lens the picture quality is good, its even better if im taking photos outside. However when i try taking photos with flash on, the picture dosent blur, but as you know having flash on takes away that natural colour which i dont want, hence i use it more often without flash.


I would really appreciate your help guys, your advice would be priceless on how i can avoid the problems im having as demonstrated above when it comes to taking photos indoors.

Youre on the right track there... To get the proper exposure you need enough light hitting the sensor... which can be achieved in a few different ways, one of which is by shutter speed. In lower light the shutter will stay open longer to get the "proper exposure" according to the cameras light meter... the longer the shutter is open the more likely it is that motion blur will occur if youre shooting a moving subject... To stop clapping one would need something like 1/250 of a second ( not entirely sure on that ) which would be tough in an indoor situation, and you would more than likely need to adjust other factors to achieve a shutter speed of that duration.

Heres a good link on understanding the "Exposure Triangle" and the 3 main elements that make it up.

Learning about Exposure – The Exposure Triangle

Start there and then try to go back and check your EXIF data on the shots you arent satisfied with and try to break down what may have went wrong.

 

[Derrel]

The majority of your photos suffer from camera shake, which is your body being a bit unsteady during the exposure AND some subject motion blurring, like the blurring on the clapping hands of the guy at the presentation,and so on. IN the shot that is mostly clear, with the guy with the red balloon, you can see that still objects are "fairly" sharp, but the moving little girl is blurred; the girl is blurred due to what is called subject motion blur, which is a self-explanatory term.

I am assuming that your camera was bought with an f/3.5~5.6 lens of some type, which does not allow a lot of light in in lower-light conditions, so the camera must compensate and use fairly long (also called "slow") shutter speed times. WIth a slow shutter speed, it's hard to hold the camera still AND moving subjects will be rendered with some blurring.

The easiest way around this is to use the pop-up flash. A second easy solution is to use a much higher ISO setting, like 800,1000,1250,or 1600 ISO. That will increase the gain on the sensor, and in effect, make it more-sensitive to light, so that you can use quicker (ie "faster") shutter speed times.

 

[Vinny]

I would also say that your photos suffer from camera motion. Derrel mentioned the ISO and if you're not going to use flash then as he said you need to up the ISO. In order to get fairly sharp photos you need a shutter speed of 1/focal length for stationary objects, faster to capture motion.

 

[Robin Usagani]

You are probably shooting in auto mode and the camera decides what shutter speed to use. You probably ended up with 1/20 sec shots which is really slow.

 

[chatsig0954]

A faster shutter speed would definitely help. You could get that by adjusting either the ISO or the apeture. You might also want to look into purchasing a monopod or tripod to help with the camera movement.

 

[SwiftTone]

The photo with the kid running is the result of too slow of a shutter speed.