Water Pump Out of Focus

[Kaye]

I am almost embarrassed to put this photo on here but really need your help. I took three pictures like this and all three were out of focus. I thought they looked good when I took them. This is the main problem I have when photographing people. I took a picture of my husband with the same settings and same three focal points, top, middle and bottom. You can see my settings below and when I took the picture I had three focus points light up, top, middle and bottom of the pump. Should I have had the Aperture at say 4.5 instead of 7.1 because of the smaller focus area I wanted or should I have had focus points light up on the pump and the background before I too the shot? Please advise.





Camera: Nikon D80
Exposure: 0.077 sec (7692307/100000000)
Aperture: f/8
Focal Length: 100 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Exposure Bias: 0/6 EV
ISO Speed: 400


YCbCr Positioning: Centered
Exposure Program: Aperture priority
Maximum Lens Aperture: 45/10
Metering Mode: Pattern
Color Space: sRGB
Sensing Method: One-chip colour area sensor
CFA Pattern: GREEN BLUE RED GREEN
Digital Zoom Ratio: 1/1
Focal Length In 35mm Film: 150
Gain Control: Low gain up
Quality: FINE
White Balance: AUTO
Focus Mode: AF-S
Colour Mode: MODE3a
Lighting Type: NATURAL

[lputman]

Do you have a trippd? If so, try the same shot except use a tripod and see how they compare.

[Elmo]

If a tripod does not help you may have a lens issue. My first thought is can you get well focused images using manual focus?

Would be curious what lens this is?

[Nathan deGargoyle]

It's almost certainly camera shake. Your shutter speed of .077 secs is approximately equal to 1/13 sec. Rule of thumb says that the slowest shutter speed for hand held is
1/focal length, in this case 1/100

Try it again in shutter priority with a speed of at least 1/100 and tell us how you get on.

[Elmo]

This kept bugging me. I looked at other captures on your flicker stream. This one seems to have a completely different set of menu adjustments. Try resetting your camera back to default settings to see if that helps.

[Kaye]

The camera was hand held for this photo. The lens was 55-200mm kit lens (non-VR). I also noticed the settings on this picture, but I didn't change anything from the photos I took of the Church.

I do have a monopod and tripod. I think I'm going to have to start using them. The camera seems heavy to me sometimes.

Thanks for your replys.
Kaye