How to Take Sharp Photos

One of the things that makes photography frustrating is softness and blur in pictures. Sharp photos are much more appealing than soft images. It is very disappointing when you take a picture of a special moment and images come out soft/blurry or out of focus. So, in this chapter of Photography Basics, I will go through the techniques I use to make sure that my images always come out tack sharp.

Let’s start with the reasons why an image might come out blurry:

1. A long shutter speed can capture camera shake, which would produce a blurry image
2. Your subject could be moving and causing motion blur, made worse by a long shutter speed
3. Poor focus acquisition would result in a soft image
4. You might have a bad lens or a lens that is not capable of producing sharp photos
5. Your ISO could be set to a very high number, resulting in lots of noise and loss of detail

In order to resolve these issues, you need to address them all at the same time, which will help achieve optimal sharpness. There are a few other causes of blurry photos, too, which I will cover below.

1. Set the Right ISO

Start with setting your camera to the lowest ISO “base” value (in my Nikon camera it is ISO 200). Remember that the camera base ISO will produce the highest quality images with maximum sharpness. The higher the ISO (sensor sensitivity), the more noise you will see in the image. I suggest reading my article on understanding ISO.

2. Use the Hand-Holding Rule

If you are shooting handheld, I would recommend applying the general hand-holding “rule,” which states that the shutter speed should be equal to the focal length set on the lens, or faster. For example, if you have your lens zoomed into 125mm, your shutter speed should be at least 1/125 of a second.

Keep in mind that this rule applied to 35mm film and digital cameras. A couple of factors can make it harder to apply today. First, if your camera or lens has a good image stabilization system, you may be able to shoot slower than that and still get sharp photos. Second, if you are shooting with a crop sensor camera (such as a Nikon 1.5x APS-C sensor, or a Micro Four Thirds camera with a 2x crop factor), you must multiply the focal length by your crop factor. Here are some examples:

• 50mm on APS-C: 1/75 (50mm x 1.5)
• 100mm on APS-C: 1/150 (100mm x 1.5)
• 50mm on Micro Four Thirds: 1/100 (50mm x 2)
• 100mm on Micro Four Thirds: 1/200 (100mm x 2)

Also, remember that this only affects blur from camera shake. If you are taking pictures of a fast moving subject, you very well may need a quicker shutter speed than this in order to get a sharp picture.

3. Choose Your Camera Mode Wisely

When I’m taking pictures in low light, 99% of the time, I shoot in Aperture-Priority mode and set aperture to the widest setting on my lens – the maximum aperture, AKA the smallest f-number. This is usually in the range of f/1.4 to f/5.6 depending on the lens. (For example, with the Nikon 35mm f/1.8 lens, I will set the aperture to its maximum value of f/1.8.) The camera automatically meters the scene and guesses what the shutter speed should be to properly expose the image. You can easily adjust the camera’s guess with exposure compensation. So, set your camera to aperture-priority mode and set the aperture to the lowest possible f-number.

Set your metering to “Matrix” on Nikon or “Evaluative” on Canon, so that the whole scene is assessed to estimate the correct shutter speed.

4. Pick a Fast Enough Shutter Speed

After you set your camera to aperture priority and pick the right metering mode, point it at the subject that you want to photograph and half-press the shutter. Doing so should show you the shutter speed on the bottom of the viewfinder.

• If the shutter speed is showing 1/100 or faster, you should be good to go, unless anything in your photo is moving quickly (or if you’re using a long telephoto lens; remember the hand-holding rule). Snap an image or two and see if you are getting any blur in your image. I typically review my images on the back of the camera at 100% and make sure that nothing is blurry. If anything in your photo is blurry – the entire image, or just one fast-moving subject – use a quicker shutter speed like 1/200 or 1/500 second.
• On the other hand, if the shutter speed is below 1/100, it might mean you simply do not have enough light. If you are indoors, opening up windows to let some light in or turning the lights on will help to increase your shutter speed. It is still possible to capture sharp photos faster than 1/100 second handheld, but it becomes increasingly more difficult the longer your shutter speed is.

5. Use High ISO in Dark Environments

If you are still getting blurry images, try to hold the camera steady without shaking it too much and take another picture. If that doesn’t help, set a fast enough shutter speed to capture sharp photos, and raise your ISO instead. You can do this via Auto ISO (described in the next section) or manually increasing ISO. In dark environments, it is not unusual to use quite a high ISO in order to get a fast enough shutter speed. Although this adds more noise/grain to a photo, that is usually better than capturing a blurry image.

6. Enable Auto ISO

Many cameras today have an “Auto ISO” feature that is very useful for capturing sharp pictures. So, set it to “On.” Set your Maximum Sensitivity to ISO 1600.

If you have the option to select a minimum shutter speed, set it to “Auto” as well, which automatically applies the hand-holding rule! If you don’t have this option, set “Minimum shutter speed” to 1/100 second.

This is a useful feature because, if the amount of light entering the lens decreases and the shutter speed goes below 1/100 of a second, the camera automatically increases ISO to keep the shutter speed above 1/100 of a second, or above the hand-holding rule.

If you have shaky hands, I would recommend bumping up the “Minimum shutter speed” to something like 1/200-1/250. Or if you have the “Auto” minimum shutter speed option, prioritize it toward “faster” just to be on the safe side. Also see our separate article on how to hand-hold a camera as stable as possible.

Some cameras don’t have an Auto ISO feature. In that case, you will have to adjust ISO manually to do the same thing. Just raise your ISO in darker environments to keep your shutter speed at a reasonable level. I don’t recommend raising the ISO above ISO 1600 or perhaps ISO 3200. Why not? Quite simply, anything higher than that in an entry-level DSLRs produces too much noise, which has a negative impact on overall image quality. On older-generation DSLRs such as Nikon D90/D200/D3000/D5000, you might want to keep the maximum ISO to 800.

7. Hold Your Camera Steady

While hand-holding a camera, factors such as your stance, breathing, camera hand-holding technique all play a huge role in stabilizing the camera and producing shake-free images.

Think of it as holding a rifle. You wouldn’t want to move around while trying to shoot – you need to stand as steady and stable as possible, pull the stock tightly into the shoulder, exhale, and then shoot. The same technique works great for your photography, especially when you have to deal with long shutter speeds.

I recommend holding the camera just like you would hold a rifle (except your right hand goes on the shutter instead of the trigger), with one of your legs out in front, and your body balance spread across both legs. I personally exhale when I shoot long shutter speeds handheld. 

If your camera or lens has image stabilization, and you employ good handheld technique, you may even be able to shoot at 1/10 second without introducing camera shake. But only use this in a pinch. Most of the time, you will not be able to get reliably sharp photos at these shutter speeds. And be sure to turn on image stabilization when shooting handheld!

8. Focus Carefully on Your Subject

Learn how to focus correctly and deal with focusing issues. This one is very important, as your camera focus directly impacts image sharpness. The first thing you need to learn is how to differentiate between a camera shake/motion blur and a focus problem.

If the subject in your image is blurry, but something closer to the camera or farther away is perfectly in focus and sharp, it is most likely a focus issue. If the whole image is blurry and nothing is sharp, it is generally due to using too long of a shutter speed handheld. And lastly, if a fast-moving object in your photo is blurry/streaky in the direction of travel, then your shutter speed is not fast enough to eliminate subject motion. That isn’t a focus problem; use a faster shutter speed.

If you are having problems acquiring a good focus, here are some things that I recommend:

• Make sure that what you’re seeing is a focus problem, not a shutter speed problem. If the wrong part of your photo is sharp, it’s a focus problem. But if the whole photo is blurry, you may have simply used too long of a shutter speed. Or if a fast-moving object in your photo is blurry in the direction of travel, you need to use a faster shutter speed.
• Lack of light can cause autofocus malfunction, resulting in inaccurate focus acquisition by the camera. Make sure there is plenty of light for your camera to properly focus.
• The center focus point is generally the most accurate in cameras. If you are having problems acquiring focus because your focus point is elsewhere, I recommend moving it back to the center, focusing, and recomposing.
• Use back-button focus. I already talked about this in the chapter on focusing, but I will mention it again here. With back-button focus, your camera will only reacquire focus when you press the AF-On button, rather than every time you take a photo. This is very helpful in dim environments where the focus works sometimes, but not always.
• Put your focus point over a higher-contrast subject. For example, if you try to focus your camera on a clean white wall, it will never be able to acquire focus, because the camera will not see any areas of contrast. Examples of good subjects are: edges of objects, lines separating different colors, numbers and letters printed on objects, etc.

9. Reduce Motion Blur in Your Subject

If you are photographing a person, tell them to freeze and not move while you take their picture. When you work with long shutter speeds, even if you do everything right, your images might still come out blurry just because your subject moved while the shutter was open. This is called motion blur. 

Sometimes people like the effect of the motion blur, especially for high-speed objects like cars. In that case, feel free to set whatever shutter speed gives you the right amount of blur. You can even pan along with a moving subject to blur the background behind it and emphasize the subject’s speed! Usually, a shutter speed of 1/15 second is a good starting point for panning photos. 

10. Turn On Vibration Reduction

Make sure that your vibration reduction (VR on Nikon) or image stabilization (IS on Canon) is set to “On” on your lens, if you have it. Many of the consumer zoom lenses have some sort of anti-shake/vibration reduction technology in them, allowing one to shoot at lower shutter speeds and still get sharp images. If you have one of those lenses, go ahead and try lowering your shutter speed to a lower value. You can even lower down the “minimum shutter speed” in your Auto ISO settings to something like 1/50 of a second and still get sharp images.

11. Use a Faster Lens

Get a good, fast lens such as an f/1.8 or f/1.4 lens. A 50mm f/1.8 lens should not be too expensive, and even a 50mm f/1.4 will often be reasonable.

Generally speaking, fixed lenses (known as “prime lenses”) are going to have brighter maximum apertures compared to zoom lenses. A prime lens also tends to have better sharpness and image quality. Although you lose the ability to zoom in and out, prime lenses are excellent choices for handheld photography and working in low light.

When I got my hands on my first prime lens, I just could not believe how much of a difference it made in terms of sharpness. If you have never used a prime lens before, give it a try, and you will not regret it.

12. Shoot RAW, not JPEG

If you want the best image quality and detail, it is best to shoot RAW rather than JPEG. While JPEG photos can be plenty sharp, the problem is that they are not very flexible files. As soon as you open them in post-processing software and start editing the colors, contrast, or brightness, you will start to get ugly artifacts in small details of the photo.

This is not the end of the world if you only print your photos very small or display them online, but it is a big problem if you want to make a large print or crop substantially. A RAW file with good sharpening technique in post-processing will bring out the maximum level of detail in your photos.

13. Use Depth of Field Strategically

When photographing people or animals, you should almost always focus on the closest eye to you. This is very important, especially when dealing with large apertures between f/1.4 and f/2.8, because your depth of field will be very shallow. As long as the eye of the subject is sharp, the image will most likely be acceptable. 

Likewise, if you are photographing a landscape, use a narrower aperture like f/8, f/11, or f/16. These apertures will give you a sharp photo from the foreground to the background. Close-up photography also requires narrow apertures if you want enough depth of field.

Avoid super narrow apertures like f/22 and f/32 if possible, because they will lose some sharpness due to diffraction. 

14. Clean Your Lenses!

An amateur photographer approached me once and asked for advice on what he could do to bring more contrast and sharpness to his images. When I saw the front element of his lens, I immediately made a suggestion to clean his lens. It was so dirty that I couldn’t believe he was still able to take pictures. A dirty and a greasy front element of the lens is a guarantee to inaccurate camera focusing and poor image contrast. If you don’t know how to do it properly, check out my article on how to clean DSLR lenses.

15. Use a Tripod

Get a tripod if you can. It is essential for shooting some subjects like lightning storms, fireworks, city lights, and other cool stuff at night. Even during the day, I like to use a tripod whenever possible, because it almost completely eliminates the variable of camera shake. (See our article on how to choose a tripod)

Don’t buy a cheap tripod designed for point and shoot cameras. Instead, invest in a heavy duty, sturdy tripod that can handle your advanced camera. Likewise, using the self-timer mode or a cable shutter release on your camera is also very helpful to minimize camera shake.

16. Shoot a Burst of Photos

If you’re taking pictures of a difficult subject or are right on the edge of a safe shutter speed, I recommend setting your camera to a “continuous shooting” mode (also known as burst mode). Then, photograph your subject in bursts by just holding the shutter button.

Especially if you are photographing a moving subject like wildlife or sports, using the burst mode helps improve the odds that you’ll get at least one sharp photo. With a bit of panning to follow along with your subject, you can get sharp photos even when your subject doesn’t stay still!

Conclusion

You’ve almost made it through Photography Basics: The Complete Beginner’s Guide! Just one more chapter left. You can go there or jump to any other chapter below.

Download as an eBook

I’ve received many requests over the years to download Photography Basics for offline viewing. As of late 2024, I’m excited to announce that I now have a dedicated eBook version of Photography Basics! The eBook covers the same information but is optimized for offline reading/printing, with a beautiful design and updated text. Photography Life members get this eBook included with their membership ($5/month, cancellable any time) alongside a lot of other benefits – including a Q&A group if you have questions about the topics I’ve covered in these articles. You can read more information about our memberships here.