Camera Settings and Lighting?!?!?!?!

[Mo22]

The setting. 5:00 EST, October 31 at a park with the trees blocking the sun from shining through, shooting an on-the-go 2 year old and his parents; wanting pictures for their Christmas cards! I only do this for fun...not a professional, but I want to achieve a much better quality. I was using a Nikon D90, 70-300 lens, ISO 200, auto, no flash and shooting in RAW.
My pictures are horrible! Mostly blurry! And of course a little dark. I can usually fix my dark photos in CS5, but there is no hope for these since they are blurry. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I will attach a photo this evening. Thanks for your help.

[Murtasma]

In a nutshell with out actually seeing the picture your shutter speed that was probably too longer.When using a telephoto lens such as that you should try and keep your shutter speed faster then 1 over your focal length. Your focus may have also been off.

If you are at 300 mm your shutter speed shoudl be faster then 1/300th of a second to stop camera shake. This still might not be fast enough to freeze motion of a child who is being very active. In a situation like this you may need a flash for some fill to freeze to motion.

[jdgonzalez]

Bump up your ISO. The D90 can shoot pretty well in low lights. I do pretty well at ISO 800

[Mo22]

Thanks! Will that still give me a clear image or will it have more noise?

[zona5101]

Originally Posted by Mo22

Thanks! Will that still give me a clear immage or will it have more noise?

Yes.

as in yes to both bumping the iso will allow you a higher shutter speed at the cost of additional noise. Whether or not the noise reaches the objectionable level is a little harder to determine...

[MikeCity]

Shooting at 5pm under the shadow while your subject is in motion is not a friendly setting for many lens, but there are a couple of things you can do to get away with it. Although shooting in aperture-priority would be ideal you can set your camera to shutter-priority mode and select a fast enough shutter speed, be careful because if you got too slow you will get motion blur if you go too fast you will be underexposure. while using shutter-priority try bumping your ISO (I don't know how good the d90 is handling noise).

Another option you have is to use the flash and do the "rear curtain flash sync" trick, a external flash would be ideal but your pop-up flash can work too but find yourself a "pop-up flash diffuser". Also you will need a tripod and your camera manual to do this. Seating your camera on a tripod set your camera to shutter-priority and select a slow shutter speed using a low ISO. It is a good idea to have your subject seating down while doing "flash sync".

During photo shoots there is little room for practicing so it is a good idea to get familiar with these techniques beforehand. Another thing I suggest is to try using manual white balance.

[Mo22]

Would it help at all to use a different lens along with the above suggestions? I have a 50mm and an 18-105?

[jdgonzalez]

I have the 50mm 1.8 and it's fantastic for low light situations. You'll need to make sure that you focus on the eyes because it has a pretty narrow depth of field at 1.8.