How to Avoid Blurry Photos: 13 Tips for Sharp Images

The Focus Is Off

Getting the focus right is one of those things — and it’s one of the most common reasons photos turn out blurry.

Like most people, you probably use your camera’s autofocus. That’s a great feature in principle, but it has its pitfalls. Because autofocus isn’t just autofocus. Most cameras let you adjust how the autofocus works. Sounds complicated? It isn’t.

On most cameras, the autofocus is set by default so that the camera itself decides which subject you want to focus on. In many situations, this setting works just fine.

But even though modern cameras are already pretty smart, they don’t have a photographer’s eye. So the camera doesn’t always focus on the right spot in your image. This can result in a finished photo where important things are blurry and unimportant things are sharp.

The solution: Take back control of the autofocus. In your menu, you can set it so that you define the focus point yourself, for example. This is incredibly practical and prevents nasty surprises from blurry photos.

This doesn’t mean you should focus completely manually, of course. You’re simply telling the camera which area to focus on, and the autofocus takes care of the rest.

Wide Open Aperture

A classic cause of blurry photos is an aperture that’s opened too wide. We’re big fans of shooting with a wide open aperture ourselves — it creates beautiful background blur and lets you make your main subject really stand out.

This effect is especially popular in portrait photography. However, when the aperture is opened very wide, there’s a real risk that your subject won’t come out sharp.

Let’s take portrait photography as an example. You’re shooting at a very wide aperture of f/1.4 or f/1.8 and focusing on your model’s eye. Ideally, everything goes smoothly. But if your model moves back just a few centimeters, their eyes — and probably the rest of their face — will no longer be tack sharp.

It doesn’t even have to be the model’s movement. An eye is such a small point that the autofocus can sometimes miss and focus on the eyebrow instead.

So wide open apertures can quickly lead to blurry images. There’s no real fix for this other than paying extra attention. The wider you open your aperture, the more care you should take when focusing.

Our tip: When shooting with a wide open aperture, check on your camera’s display right away whether the image is sharp in the right spot. On most cameras, you can also zoom into the image and see very quickly whether it’s sharp or not.

Closed Aperture

You increase the depth of field in your photos by closing down the aperture. That’s generally true, and the depth of field in an image at f/10 is definitely greater than at f/1.8.

You might get the idea to close the aperture down as far as possible — for example, to get maximum depth of field in landscape shots. Unfortunately, that’s precisely what can make your photos go blurry.

The issue is that every lens has an aperture range in which it produces the sharpest images. This varies from lens to lens.

For many lenses, the ideal sharpness range falls between f/7.1 and f/11. Beyond that, photos start to get softer again. Not completely blurry, but just no longer tack sharp.

Our tip: You can easily test this with your own lens by photographing the same subject under the same conditions at different aperture settings. That way you can find out at which aperture your lens delivers the best results — and when it starts to get softer.

Shutter Speed Too Slow

Another very common cause of blurry images is a shutter speed that’s too slow. Let’s take a quick look at how shutter speed works:

Shutter speed determines how long your camera’s shutter stays open while you take a photo. When you take a picture, light hits your camera’s sensor. By setting the shutter speed on your camera, you control how long you want light to fall on the sensor.

With a shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second, you’re letting light hit the sensor for only a very brief moment, which lets you freeze fast motion sharply in your image.

But if your shutter speed is 1 second, you’re letting light hit the sensor for a full second. That means anything moving in your frame will either not be captured at all or will appear blurry.

You're Moving

We often forget that we ourselves are moving too. We’re not a tripod — our hands shake, our bodies move, and our arms can get tired.

This is especially a factor when you have very little light available and need to shoot at a relatively slow shutter speed.

For handheld shooting, there’s a great rule of thumb: your shutter speed should never be slower than the focal length of the lens you’re using.

Say you’re shooting at a focal length of 50mm — your shutter speed shouldn’t be slower than 1/50 of a second. If you’re shooting at 200mm, your shutter speed shouldn’t be slower than 1/200 of a second.

It’s not always perfectly exact, of course, but it’s a really handy guideline when shooting handheld.

Our Tips

If your shutter speed is borderline slow and you can’t shorten it any further, try using your own body as a support by pressing one or both elbows against your torso.

You can also look for something to lean against. That prevents your body from swaying. Maybe you’ll even find something you can rest your camera on.

Also, make sure your image stabilizer is turned on. There are a few things to keep in mind about that, though, so we’ll cover it separately a bit further down.

Your Subject Is Moving

That leads us directly to the next problem. Even if you’re holding the camera very steady and the shutter speed isn’t too slow, your image can still end up blurry.

Because it’s not just us who move while shooting — things in our frame are often moving too.

That might be pedestrians or cars, for example. But we run into this problem with playing children, wild animals, marathon runners, cyclists, or horse races as well.

The rule of thumb about shutter speed and focal length doesn’t help us here anymore, because our subjects are usually moving far too fast for that.

The solution: The camera’s shutter speed needs to be even shorter so that fast-moving people or objects are captured sharply in the frame.

Our tip: In situations like these, shoot in S mode (on some cameras also called Tv) and make sure your shutter speed is short enough to freeze fast motion. Depending on the lighting conditions, your camera will at some point tell you “If you shorten the exposure time any further, your image will be underexposed.” At that point, you have two options: increase the ISO (which results in image noise) or open the aperture wider (which results in a shallower depth of field).

Image Stabilizer On

Many cameras and lenses have an image stabilizer. Always make sure your image stabilizer is turned on when shooting handheld. It helps the camera compensate for small movements and keeps your subject sharp despite minor camera shake.

So if you haven’t figured out yet where to turn the image stabilizer on and off, you should definitely look into it.

It’s either adjustable directly in your camera settings or on your lens. The image stabilizer isn’t always called that, either. On our camera, for example, it’s called SteadyShot.

It’s really important that you know where to turn it off and on. Because there are also situations where you absolutely need to turn it off to get a sharp image. We’ll cover that in more detail further down in the article.

You're Not Using a Tripod

There are situations where you simply can’t get sharp images shooting handheld. These are moments when you don’t have enough light to shoot handheld: night shots or long exposures during the day — for example, to photograph flowing water with a silky smooth look.

As soon as you want to expose your photo longer than the rule of thumb 1/second = focal length allows, you always need a tripod. Otherwise your photos will be completely blurry — no exceptions!

When we travel, we almost always have at least one tripod with us, usually our very lightweight travel tripod, the Rollei Compact Traveler No. 1 Carbon.

Image Stabilizer Off

Huh, what? We just said above that you should turn the image stabilizer on. So why should it suddenly be turned off?

Simple: your image stabilizer should be turned off when you’re using a tripod and the camera is sitting still!

This is actually a mistake that’s made very often. You specifically put the camera on a tripod to get a tack-sharp image, and then you nearly lose your mind because the photo keeps coming out blurry no matter what.

Why? Because the image stabilizer is still doing its actual job even with the tripod — namely, compensating for slight movements (your movements!).

But when the camera isn’t moving at all and is sitting perfectly still on a tripod, the image stabilizer unfortunately does the opposite. It introduces camera shake!

So: always turn off the image stabilizer when shooting on a tripod, and don’t forget to turn it back on afterward.

Self-Timer

Another reason your images turn out blurry even when you’re shooting on a tripod is the act of pressing the shutter!

When you use a tripod, the whole point is that your camera sits perfectly still. But if you put it on a tripod and press the shutter button normally with your finger, you inevitably move the camera. No matter how carefully you press the shutter, you’ll always cause the camera to vibrate slightly and end up with blurry photos.

You have two options to avoid this mistake!

Either you use the self-timer and let the camera fire a few seconds after you press the shutter button.

Or you shoot with a remote shutter release. The first method costs you nothing at all, but the more reliable approach is the remote shutter release, which costs around $20–50.

The price varies depending on whether you want a wireless or wired remote shutter release.

We use this wireless remote shutter release, which we can highly recommend: Ayex AX-5/S2 Wireless Remote Shutter Release.

Make sure the remote shutter release is compatible with your camera.

You're Too Close

Another common reason for blurry photos is that the minimum distance between your subject and your camera’s sensor isn’t being maintained.

Every lens has what’s called a minimum focus distance, usually stated in millimeters or centimeters. This minimum focus distance tells you how close you can get your camera to a subject before it goes out of focus.

An example: You spot a beautiful flower on the side of the road and want to photograph it. Your lens has a minimum focus distance of 30 centimeters. That means you need to stay at least 30 centimeters away from the flower.

The minimum focus distance is usually printed on the lens itself. That’s also why so-called macro lenses exist. They have a very short minimum focus distance, allowing you to get super close to insects or flowers.

Our tip: Just try it out for yourself. Grab your camera and place an object in front of you. Then start by trying to get the object in focus while standing pretty close to it. That probably won’t work, so just step back a little at a time and see at what point the camera is able to focus on the object.

The Gear Is to Blame

We all love to blame the gear.

But if we’re honest with ourselves, in most cases it’s not the camera or the lens — it’s simply one of the mistakes we’ve just walked you through.

In very rare cases, though, you truly can’t be blamed for the blur and your lens actually has a defect.

If you’re genuinely convinced that it’s not your fault, you should send your lens in for proper calibration.

It’s also possible that the autofocus on your camera needs to be recalibrated. It’s best to leave that to your trusted camera dealer. Maybe you’re still under warranty?

It's Not Actually Blurry

One last reason — and it’s a bit of a different one. When we talk about blurry photos, we should also talk about what “sharp” actually means.

Sure, some photos are obviously blurry. They’re completely shaky or smeared and clearly unusable.

But there’s also often the case where an image is only slightly soft — and that’s often not such a big deal.

Slightly soft? What does that even mean? If you look at your photo in a small format on your computer, it might look absolutely great. But when you zoom in, that same image suddenly looks completely blurry, and in a panic you toss it straight into the virtual trash.

Hold on — not so fast. First ask yourself what you actually want to do with the photo.

Do you just want to view it on your computer? Are you a blogger who wants to use it on your website? Maybe print a photo book? Print it on canvas and hang it above your sofa, or display it as an advertising poster on the side of a building?

You can probably see where we’re going with this. Of course it’s not ideal that your favorite photo isn’t as sharp as you’d like. But maybe you’ll be less frustrated if you think about what you actually need it for. Because then you might find that the sharpness of the image is perfectly adequate for that purpose.

To show you what we mean, here are two “blurry” photos we took:

Our conclusion on blurry photos

There are many reasons why your images can turn out blurry. The important thing is to know the various causes and avoid as many of them as possible.

Of course you can’t think of everything at once when you’re starting out. That’s completely normal. But we promise you: practice makes perfect!

One more thing we want to mention: please don’t try to artificially sharpen blurry images after the fact. Most photo editing programs, such as Lightroom, have a sharpening feature. But that’s not meant for blurry images — it’s only meant to make already-sharp images look even sharper.

A truly blurry image stays blurry and can’t be saved. Into the trash it goes — and just do better next time.

Instead of figuring out how to sharpen blurry images after the fact, focus on learning to understand your camera’s settings. That way, after just a short time, blurry images will no longer be a problem.

Not only is it seriously fun to learn how each camera setting works, it also leads to better results very quickly. Feeling inspired? Then check out our online photography course.

And now we wish you tons of fun shooting, failing, and pushing forward — sending you lots of #cameralove!