Blury pics

[BeverlyLanders]

I am trying to learn the Canon Rebel t3i. I shot my granddaughter's elementary graduation program inside the gym on Auto. All of my pictures on stage were blury. What setting should I have used?

[Hawgwild]

Beverly, I feel for you. First, in a setting such as a lit stage in an auditorium, you should shoot on shutter priority, and use a high enough iso to get a good exposure. The blur you refer to was likely caused by slow shutter speed. Auto is great for outdoors where there is plenty of light. Indoors, without a flash, it can be your enemy.
Secondly, when shooting shutter priority, the speed you select should be calculated by using the fraction 1/X, where X is the focal length of the lens. So if you are shooting at 200mm, you would use a shutter speed of 1/200 or faster.

If you already knew this stuff, the take me with a grain of salt. If not, I hope this helps.

[BBbuilder467]

Maybe the moderater could move your post to the Canon "dslr" forum. It might need specific alterations to the default settings to get the camera to achieve the faster shutter speed needed to freeze motion. That might be model specific.

If the camera has an indoor sports/action mode on the dial or in the SCN modes, that might have helped bias the camera more toward the higher shutter speed, ISO, white balance and metering for the purpose, without learning everything from scratch.

[wave01]

Hi you need to take the camera off auto use either av or tv and select a central focus point. You need to keep the shutter speed as high as possible so the iso May have to be upped to achieve this

[gjtoth]

I'm surprised no one has suggested to show a couple of examples. I could be motion blur but then, it COULD be misuse of the camera... like not letting the camera focus.

Just my nickle's worth.

[TCav]

There are three settings that affect exposure:

• Shutter Speed - The length of time the image sensor is exposed to light.
• ISO - The sensitivity of the image sensor to light.
• Aperture - The amount of light that is allowed to pass through the lens during the exposure.

When you're taking photos indoors, there isn't very much light to start with, so you need to make the most of what you've got.

But abusing any one of those three settings results in a poor image:

• If the Shutter Speed is too long, you'll get motion blur, both from subject movement and from camera shake.
• If the ISO is too high, you'll get image noise.
• If the Aperture is too large, you'll get a very shallow Depth of Field.

In truth, using an aperture that's too large isn't a very big problem. The real problem is that it's hard to get an aperture that's too large. Large apertures mean large, heavy, expensive lenses, which aren't generally the kind of lenses that come free with the camera. So if you're stuck with relatively small apertures anyway, all you can do is choose between motion blur and image noise.

The Auto mode generally opts for motion blur, because it generally doesn't mess with ISO very much.

The real solution to your problem is to get larger aperture lenses like a 85mm f/1.8, or a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. Either that, or not take photos indoors. ... or understand at the outset that they're not going to be very good.

[PeterP]

One other option to add to TCav's great suggestions is to get a decent flash(s).
And learn to use it off-camera if possible.

Unfortunately a decent flash like a Canon 600EX-RT or 580ex is also not an inexpensive item.

[TCav]

Given the brief description BeverlyLanders gave of her circumstances, I suspect the event occurred in an auditorium or other large room, and that, because of the long subject distance, a flash wouldn't have been much use.

[JohnG]

Originally Posted by TCav

Given the brief description BeverlyLanders gave of her circumstances, I suspect the event occurred in an auditorium or other large room, and that, because of the long subject distance, a flash wouldn't have been much use.

There are certainly multiple approaches. A fast lens with appropriate reach is a bonus. But, I wanted to comment on the above - in reality the reach of a good external flash is usually greater than the reach of the lens.

For example, if you had a 200mm lens you wouldn't want to be further than 60-70 feet from the subject. That is well within the guide number of a quality external flash. For example, here's a shot from way back (20d with sigma 500 dg flash) taken from about that distance away (186mm to be exact) lens and flash. The flash did fine:'


further away at 300mm:


Like I said there are multiple options. With today's high iso capabilities and the non or slow moving subjects, a 70-200 2.8 is a fine option (85mm is much more restricting - can't be too close or too far away). But a good external flash is more than capable of the distances involved too. And extremely beneficial for other family photography. Let's face it, the built in flash on any camera stinks. And it's tough to take good group shots and indoor birthday parties without a flash.

[TCav]

If those shots were illuminated by the flash, there wouldn't be any shadows on their faces. The primary source of light for those shots was NOT an on-camera external flash, whatever its guide number might have been.