6 Reasons why your photos could be out of focus, and how to fix it.

It’s a problem many new and seasoned photographers face. You’re out taking the best photos you’ve ever taken, you’re checking the back of the camera and the photos look fantastic… Then you get home, upload the files to your computer, aaand they’re all out of focus. There’s many reasons why this could have happened so I have taken the time to list some of the main causes and what you can do to help rectify the problem.

1. Motion Blur

This will look slightly different to most out of focus issues. This is because it’s caused by a combination of slow shutter speed and movement… either in the camera, or from the subject and can be avoided fairly easily.

The reason you may have a slow shutter speed could be because you’re in one of the auto or semi auto modes (Camera modes explained here) and are photographing in low light with a small aperture (high number), or low ISO which can default the camera settings to a slower shutter speed to let more light on to the sensor. When this happens if you don’t have a steady hand, or a tripod, the slight camera shake can cause motion blur… also if the subject moves while you’re taking the photo it can cause motion blur at slow shutter speeds.

You can try either a larger aperture (lower number) which will let more light in and also give you a shallower depth of field (blurrier background behind your subject), or increase your ISO which gives you artificial light, but the higher you go with your iso the more noise you will introduce in to your picture.

Both of these methods will allow you to increase your shutter speed enough to help you reduce motion blur. Anything over about 1/250 should be more than enough to avoid camera shake for most focal lengths. Remember the longer the focal length the harder it is to keep steady.

*A good rule of thumb is to never shoot at a shutter speed below your focal length e.g. 85mm = 1/85. Once you go below 1/60 though it’s best to use a tripod.

2. Focus Points

If you are using the auto-area AF the focus points in your camera will be trying to focus on the nearest thing, so keep an eye on which points are flashing up as they will be the spots in focus. If you find them annoying like I do then you can try assigning a single AF point so you know exactly what spot you’re focusing on for every shot. Your manual should tell you how to do this.

*Be careful using the single AF point and recomposing method when using larger apertures, as the slight shift of the camera for recomposition can be enough to mess up your focus.

3. Shallow DOF

Shallow depth of field is a beautiful thing, but not when the wrong part, or not enough of the image, is in focus.

Shallow depth of field is a result of having a larger aperture (lower f-stop number) and is commonly used for photographing portraits. It gives a nice blurry background behind your subject making them the main focus of your photograph, but if your aperture is too large you can accidentally have an ear or nose in focus and the eyes blurry. If your subject is on a slight angle the DOF can be so shallow that only one eye is in focus.

Make sure when photographing people that if you’re using a large aperture say around f/1.4 – f/2 that their eyes are parallel to the camera, or increase the aperture to f/2.8 – f/3. If you’re photographing a group, or family f/5.6 – f/8 is usually pretty good if there aren’t too many.

4. Lens Issues

Another cause of photos being out of focus can be because of issues with the lens you’re using. Cheap, or bad quality lenses can just have poor sharpness which unfortunately the  only solution is investing in a better quality lens.

Other problems can be lens calibration which your camera repair should be able to fix. You can also buy calibration kits for your lens if you’re keen to try and calibrate it yourself.

Also if your lens has a sudden change of temperature e.g if you go from an air-conditioned room out in to hot weather the glass can fog up, so make sure you let your lens adjust to the temperature you’re photographing in to avoid foggy photos.

5. High ISO

Lastly having a high ISO set on your camera is great for creating more light when taking photos, but it comes at a cost – creating more grain/noise in your images which in turn creates a loss of detail. Don’t be too scared to push your ISO on the better quality cameras, they can generally handle a much higher ISO than the cheaper ones. It really comes down to trial and error. When you first purchase your camera see how far you can push the ISO before it goes from natural looking grain… to heavy noise with artifacts and large loss of detail.

Conclusion

At the end of the day there are many causes for photography being out of focus, but these are some of the main causes. Still to this day even with all the new correction software and camera technology out of focus photos are near impossible to fix unless you have a Lytro camera, but if you take the right precautions it can be easily avoided.

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