[Ilyanep]

So I have this huge problem with camera focusing and blurriness in general, and it comes in multiple parts.

(I'm shooting with a Nikon D50 by the way).


1) When I'm setting down my camera on something and then I run into the frame while the timer is running, a lot of the times I don't have the focus set to the right distance (example below). How do you guys avoid this when taking self-portraits with tripods, etc.



2) My camera seems to have a lot more camera shake blur than I would think it would have. Even though I shoot with focal lengths 18-50 a lot of the time (my lens is 18-70) and with an ISO of 800 whenever I'm shooting indoors with artificial light and hand-held. [A few examples below] Any tips on how to fix this?

[I'm actually not sure that all of these are camera shake or if some of them are just focusing at the wrong distance :\]



3) Finally, when I try to fix these in Photoshop CS3, I usually end up with horrid results [examples below -- they're better than what came out of the camera but are still weird]. Any tips for good sharpening in Photoshop?






Thanks for all your help!