Messed up taking photos with my new Nikon D3000

[eagleguy]

Just spent the last day taking what I though would be excellent pictures of my sons football game with my new toy. To my dismay everything I took whether moving or standing still is blurry (out of focus). Not totaly bad but enough to make me mad! Set the camera to sports mode with my 55/200 mm DX/AF/VR lens and thought everything would be fine. WRONG! Then I switched to the 18-55 lens (same VR) for regular photos and guess what Out of Focus again! I can see and hear the auto focus engaging but still bad shots. What did I do?????????? Help!!

 

[robbie_vlad]

Check your autofocus points. Sounds like the camera was focusing on the wrong thing.

 

[DennyCrane]

Are manual focus shots out of focus, too? There could be a problem with the lens mount of the camera.

 

[tirediron]

Post a couple of the 'bad' images here along with the full EXIF data; very hard to make a diagnosis without seeing the patient.

 

[eagleguy]

What is exif data?

 

[DennyCrane]

Exif data is the small file attached to every digital camera picture about the camera, the shutter settings, flash info, what mode was used, etc.

There's a lot of programs out there to view exif data, here's one for Windows:
Exif Viewer - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

And if you use Firefox as your browser, here's a nice plugin. Right click any picture and you have the option to view the exif data.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3905

 

[--ares--]

This happened to me when I took some shots at a football game, turns out it was a little bit of moisture built up in front of my lens. All my shots probably looked like yours. I think you should post some of your photos and the EXIF to go along with it.

better luck next time

 

[eagleguy]

Wanted to upload some photos but don't see how?

 

[fokker]

You should host them on photobucket or flickr. It's free.

 

[jnm]

Wanted to upload some photos but don't see how?

if you use firefox go to where the photo is hosted (flickr, photobucket, etc.), right click, copy image location, paste here with

after it.

if you dont have firefox most online photo hosting sites have an option to get the link to the pic (as opposed to the whole folder of pictures), once you have it use the

tags.

 

[Taaron]

What type of camera are you using
did you set the camera to fast shutter speed 1/400 or more with a aperture of at least 5.6

 

[Lyncca]

It sounds like you don't have a fast enough lens to me. You are going to be hard pressed to get anything of decent quality with a kit lens if the game was low lit at all. Were these day or evening pics? Maybe cranking up your ISO will help you out, but between your subject moving and hand-shake you are going to get the type of images you got with night shots.

 

[jnm]

What type of camera are you using

probably not a Nikon D3000.

 

[fiveoboy01]

I'm willing to bet that your camera was calling for a slow shutter speed to get the correct exposure, and this is what caused your blurry photos.

First get out of sports mode and shoot in aperture priority. Use the lowest f-stop number that your lens will go to. Crank the ISO until you get a shutter speed fast enough to freeze the motion. This is going to vary depending on how fast the players are, and their direction, but 1/300-1/500 is sufficient to stop motion in most cases.... You may end up with noisy photos but noisy is better than blurry.

Check your focus as well, for sports you should be in AF-C focus mode, single point AF. You'll need to play with matrix/center weighted/spot metering to see what works best.

It'd help if you posted a pic or two. Were these during the day or at night? Night time is tough because of the low light, even using all the suggestions above you might not have a fast enough lens to freeze motion.