first shot and manual focus and single point/dynamic area

[sbakewell0508]

Ok, so I have a Nikon D90 and I went out shooting this last weekend, and I am beyond frustrated with my results. I normally shoot in auto focus mode, but i actually read a book about my camera and discovered single point focus and dynamic area focus. I also wanted to try manual focusing (i used to manual focus on a static camera for years)

Almost every single one of my photos is blurry! When I was out shooting I made sure to do every shot twice, once manual focus and one with single point focus. I can understand my manual focus shots being blurry... except that they looked great through the viewfinder... i know that will come with practice, but really they did look fine through my lens. (I was using a 50mm 1.8F) On the single point, i always made sure to focus on my subjects eyes of course.

What is frustrating is that it was a overcast day, but still lots of light.. for most shots i stayed at 1/80 sec at a fstop of 10. while i know mine can go down to 1.8, i did not want a narrow depth of field. i did not use flash at first but when i went into an alley (using the settings above) i used flash to side light my subject and held a reflector to bounce back on her face.. .. i feel that the color is good.. the pics are not dark.. but just horribly blurry... even ones i used the flash.

any ideas what i may of done wrong or anything?

 

[Edsport]

Post a couple photos with the exif intact...

 

[Snakeguy101]

maybe you need to adjust the diopter on the viewfinder. Or maybe your shutter speed was too low.

 

[sbakewell0508]

i could see the diopter affecting my manual focus... but it would not have anything to do with single point. normally i would of used a shallow dof, except for these i didn't want to cause of using the single point for the first time i didn't want to miss my point and then have everything else soft too. these are my sooc jpegs (shoot raw+fine jpeg)

my diopter was turned to the side (it must of been bumped) you cant really tell on flickr but these are all soft or hazy when you zoom into 100% thats when it does it

ok for some reason it does not let me embed pics from flickr... my flicker stream is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefaniejmiller/ i was talking about the first three pics.. the rest i fixed that problem to thanks to tpf!