Why Are My Photos Blurry? How to Read the Blur and Fix It

Most blurry photos come from one of a few causes: missed focus, a shutter speed too slow for camera shake or subject movement, or depth of field that is too shallow. Each one leaves a different pattern in the picture, so you can zoom in, read the blur, and change the single setting that fixes that cause.

Step one: look at the photo at full size

A photo can look sharp on your camera's small screen and still appear soft when you view it at full size on a computer. Before you change any settings, open the file on a bigger screen and zoom to 100 percent. The back-of-camera preview is too small to show the difference between a sharp eye and one that is slightly off.

Then ask one question about the image: is any part of it truly sharp? According to Fstoppers, if one specific area is sharp and the rest is soft, the cause is either missed focus or shallow depth of field. If nothing is sharp, or the blur has a direction to it, look at shutter speed first, because a slow shutter gives the camera more time to record movement from your hands or your subject.

A quick guide to reading the blur

Cause	What you see in the photo	The setting that fixes it
Camera shake	Ghosting, where edges look doubled	Faster shutter speed, using the reciprocal rule as a minimum
Subject motion	A directional smear on the moving subject	Faster shutter speed; stabilization will not help
Missed focus	One area is sharp, but it is not your subject	Choose the focus point yourself, or use eye detection
Too-shallow depth of field	The focused plane is sharp and softness grows smoothly away from it, with no smear or ghosting	Narrower aperture, or step back from the subject
Lens limits	General softness at the long end of some budget zooms, or at very small apertures	Avoid the weakest focal lengths and the smallest apertures

Camera shake

Camera shake happens when your hands or the camera move while the photo is being taken. Photography Life describes it as usually caused by poor hand-holding technique or by mirror and shutter vibrations. In the picture, it shows up as ghosting rather than a clean smear in one direction.

The fix: the reciprocal rule

The reciprocal rule matches your shutter speed's denominator to your focal length, so at 400mm you would need at least 1/400 sec. Remember that a zoom lens changes this number every time you zoom, which a Photography Life reader points out new photographers often miss. The same reader notes that on APS-C, with its 1.5x factor, a lens at 400mm called for at least 1/600 sec.

Higher resolution sensors make shake easier to spot, because more megapixels means more detail in which to see it. In the Digital Camera World writer's experience, the reciprocal rule holds up to about 24MP, and beyond that you will want to double or even triple the shutter speed's denominator. If your camera has a high-resolution sensor and your hand-held shots are slightly soft, try a faster shutter speed than the basic rule suggests.

Where image stabilization fits

Image stabilization compensates for camera shake, but how many stops it buys depends on the camera and lens. Digital Camera World gives the example that if the rule calls for 1/500 sec and your lens stabilizes three stops, you should still get sharp shots at 1/60 sec. The same writer recommends caution, and says that at 500mm even a well-stabilized setup at 1/60 sec would be a last resort. Treat the stabilization rating as a ceiling, not a target.

On a tripod, the advice flips. An Fstoppers writer explains that with most systems you should turn stabilization off when the camera is on a tripod, because it can work against the tripod and blur the image. That writer's own camera turns stabilization off automatically on a tripod, but this does not work on all cameras. Check your manual to see which kind you have.

To control shutter speed directly, use shutter priority or manual mode. The guide to camera modes walks through both.

Subject motion

If your shots are still blurry and the cause is not camera shake, it is probably your subject moving. A slow shutter speed records the subject's movement during the exposure as motion blur. The giveaway is a directional smear. Often the background is crisp and only the person, animal or vehicle that moved is streaked.

Stabilization cannot fix this. As a Photography Life reader puts it, stabilization works by correcting camera movement, so if your subject is moving, such as water, an animal or a bird, it will not do a thing. The only fix is a faster shutter speed. If that makes the image too dark, open the aperture or raise the ISO, keeping ISO as low as reasonably possible.

For sports, kids and wildlife, focus tracking matters as much as shutter speed. The guide to autofocus settings for action photography covers continuous focus modes.

Missed focus

Missed focus means the camera focused on the wrong thing. You will see a sharp area somewhere in the frame, just not on your subject: a sharp ear with soft eyes, or a sharp wall behind a soft face.

The usual causes

iPhotography lists the common culprits:

• Letting the camera pick the focus point, so it grabs whatever is nearest or highest in contrast.
• Focusing in the middle and then recomposing, which swings the plane of focus off your subject.
• Using a wide aperture such as f/1.8, where depth of field is an inch or two and there is no margin.
• Shooting in light too dim for autofocus to lock, so it hunts and gives up.

The fix: take control of the focus point

Many advanced cameras have eye detection, which simplifies portraits. Without it, Fstoppers suggests a single focus point, though it may sometimes land on the eyelashes instead of the eyeball. Portrait photographer Klise, quoted by Adobe, notes that with shallow depth of field, focus on the nose instead of the eyes misses the mark. Place the point on the nearest eye yourself, and avoid focus-and-recompose when you shoot wide open.

When it really is the equipment

Equipment can be at fault, but it is less common than technique. In Photography Life's autofocus test article, the author describes a Nikon D800E with a misaligned phase detect sensor that caused severe backfocus with every lens. The same author found a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G with a bad front focus problem on a Nikon D700. A reader adds that fast lenses such as f/1.8 or f/1.4 are the most useful for this kind of test, because the greater depth of field of slower lenses can mask autofocus errors.

Another commenter on that article estimates that most online complaints about broken autofocus come from bad technique or motion blur blamed on autofocus. That is one reader's rough view, not a measurement, but it is a good reason to rule out shutter speed and focus point before you send anything in for repair. Fstoppers also mentions manual focus adjustment or recalibrating a portrait lens as possible fixes.

Depth of field that is too shallow

Depth of field is the zone of sharpness, and when it is too thin, the camera focused correctly but the zone was too narrow. Fstoppers describes the look: the focused area is truly sharp, softness increases smoothly as you move away from it, and there is no directional smear or ghosting.

Three things make depth of field shallower. A low f-number, from about f/1.4 to f/5.6, gives a plane of focus between a few inches and a few feet. A longer focal length makes it shallower. Getting closer to your subject also makes it thinner at any aperture.

The fix: stop down or step back

Fstoppers gives these starting points:

Subject	Suggested aperture
Single-subject portrait	f/4 to f/5.6
Group	f/5.6 to f/8
Landscape, sharp front to back	f/8 to f/11

At f/1.8 or f/2.8, a portrait lens can have depth of field so thin that focusing on the tip of the nose throws the eyes out of focus. Distance helps too: Fstoppers notes that a headshot at f/2.8 from three feet has razor-thin focus, while a full-body shot at f/2.8 from ten feet has considerably more depth. If you struggle at close distances, backing up slightly can help more than stopping down.

Dim rooms make this harder. Adobe points out that you may open up to f/1.4 to get enough light, which leaves the subject at risk of blur, and that moving to f/5.6 or f/8 will likely need added lighting. Raising ISO is the other option, with the trade-off that high ISO can also make images look soft.

A wide aperture is a choice, not a requirement. Writing in Fstoppers, a wildlife photographer says he almost never shot his Canon 400mm f2.8 wide open, because he did not want animal portraits with sharp eyes and soft noses or ears. The guide to portrait photography basics covers how to pick an aperture for faces.

Lens limits and diffraction

Some lenses are not that sharp. An Fstoppers writer says virtually all budget zooms, especially in the 70 to 75-300mm range, do not perform well across the whole focal length range. The same writer considers the common 50mm f/1.8 primes not great either. If your shots are soft only at the far end of a zoom, try zooming back a little and cropping.

The sharpest aperture is not fixed. Photography Life notes that a lens may be sharpest in the center at f/4 but in the corners at f/5.6, and that the optimal aperture can change as you zoom or focus closer.

At the other extreme is diffraction. A Photography Life comparison shows f/22 capturing much more of the scene within its depth of field than f/5.6, while the point of focus itself loses sharpness. The same source says the difference between f/16 and f/11 is likely small in the real world, with diffraction favoring f/11 and f/16 reducing the lens's own unsharpness, so it is a trade-off. For most landscapes, start in the f/8 to f/11 range.

Other causes worth ruling out

High ISO can make photos look soft, so keep it as low as reasonably possible. Over long distances, heat rising from the ground on hot days creates haze that softens distant subjects. An Fstoppers writer suggests shooting in calmer weather and early in the morning, and notes that getting closer helps wildlife photographers avoid atmospheric distortion, as long as the animal's welfare and your safety come first.

A diagnostic order to follow

1. Zoom to 100 percent on a computer screen.
2. Look for a sharp area. If there is one and it is not your subject, fix your focus point. If it is your subject but the rest falls off too fast, stop down or step back.
3. If nothing is sharp, look for ghosting or a smear. Ghosting means raise your shutter speed for shake. A smear on the subject means raise it for motion.
4. If everything checks out and the image is still soft, look at ISO, aperture extremes and the zoom range you used.
5. Only then test the lens and camera for focus calibration.

Sharpness is not controlled by one setting: shutter speed, aperture, ISO and focus point all work together.