I am really confused! I have been working with my newly bought 50mm f/1.8 II lens (Canon) I can't understand why some of my pictures are really blurry even with a tripod. Some of the pictures look really blurry around the edges and some are completly washed out! Most of the shots are taken outside. I am using Aperture Mode on my Rebel 300D. What am I doing wrong?
Definitely, shooting at F/1.8 is not something you would want as your working aperature. Use it creatively and when you need to but usually you will want to stop down some.
To get real help, please post a shot. Without an example, we can only guess. If you are using 1.8 & the shots are coming out washed up, try using a larger F stop to cut out the amount of light.
I am using f/1.8 and not using self-timer or the remote.
Shutter speed is what you want to watch. At 1/250 or faster, in good light on a stationary subject, shots should come out sharp without self-timer/remote. A heron, for example, flies sharp at about 1/640 sec, a crow between 1/800 and 1/1000, a hummingbird, well, 1/3000 or thereabouts.
Below 1/250, if you press the shutter button, camera shake will or might show. When my camera is mounted on a tripod, I don't touch the shutter button - period. For long exposures (waterfalls, poor light and night shots) I lock the mirror as well.
[quote=toddnicholsphotography]
Below 1/250, if you press the shutter button, camera shake will or might show.
I was always of the understanding that below the 1/60 second
threshold was where most cannot hold steady enough to prevent
camera shake.
I'd roughly agree with this, under ideal conditions. I have found the shutter action on my 10D to cause quite a bit of vibration on its own and prefer a consistently good result to a less predictable one.
The speed you can successfully hand hold at is related to the effective focal length of the lens - so in 35mm terms, you can roughly handhold a x mm lens at 1/x s shutterspeed or faster -
100mm lens, 1/125s or faster, 200mm lens, 1/250s or faster, 20mm lens, 1/20s or faster and so on. As a rule of thumb it works quite well - you can certainly occasionally get away with slower speeds, and in most cases I want to use double the suggested speed to get really sharp prints, for enlargements, but it loosely holds.
