Out of Focus :(

[thirdxacharm06]

So I went to my little sister's graduation this weekend with the hopes of taking some great photos to document the wonderful occasion. Well, I took about 100 pictures and I'd say maybe only half of them were decent. The one shot I got that was just so naturally her came out way out of focus. I'm still so new at this with my camera and I have no clue about editing. I'm wondering if there is anyone out there that can maybe tell me how to salvage this photo. I would be forever grateful!



Camera: Nikon D5000
Exposure: 0.033 sec (1/30)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 200 mm
Focal Length: 201.6 mm
ISO Speed: 800
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Auto, Fired, Return detected

[kirbinster]

Generally you don't want to shoot any slower than one over the focal length for hand-held shots. You shot this at 1/30th of a second and should not have been going under 1/200th - thus the motion blur. Thus, you need to boost your ISO -- I am guessing you were using a Nikon 55-200 lens, but don't know. If it is a VR version you might get away with 1/125th second or 1/100 second but not any slower. I don't know how far away you were, but I am guessing that you were further away than the flash would do anything for you also.

[AshNZ]

Hi

Unfortunately, blur is very hard to fix. It's one thing that has to be perfect when taking a picture. I've been bitten too!! But if you have photoshop, maybe this will help: Repair Blurred Photo

[edbayani]

i don't think there is a fix for out of focus and camera movement. but since you cannot reshoot, you can remedy this by sharpening the edges of the subject using quickmask and brush with the hardest brush about 4 pixels in size. brush the edge of the subject outside the image so you can select the area from the edge and the bg. exit quick mask to make it into a selection. press the right arrow twice or thrice to move the selection to the right of the bg. then press ctrl - alt to copy the selected area of the bg and press the left arrow once, release the ctrl-alt keys and press twice the left arrow to bring the selection back to the original position. deselect. then maybe blur the bg a little and darken the 4 corners to vignette it a bit to to give attention to the graduate.
this is what i did.

[wulf]

Originally Posted by kirbinster

Generally you don't want to shoot any slower than one over the focal length for hand-held shots. You shot this at 1/30th of a second and should not have been going under 1/200th - thus the motion blur. Thus, you need to boost your ISO -- I am guessing you were using a Nikon 55-200 lens, but don't know. If it is a VR version you might get away with 1/125th second or 1/100 second but not any slower. I don't know how far away you were, but I am guessing that you were further away than the flash would do anything for you also.

The ISO was boosted to 800 so, more precisely, it would need to be boosted further. I'm not sure what high ISO performance is like on the D5000 - I imagine that you might be pushing it to use a high enough ISO for the lighting conditions (assuming f/5.6 was the widest you could get the aperture).

For low light, a shorter, faster lens wins out over a longer, slower one. You can get away with a lower speed before camera shake becomes apparent and can also open up much wider. For the picture you have taken, I think intensifying the colour, like edbayani, is a good way to go, although I'd want to tone down the white catchlights in her eyes (too glassy). Also, don't forget the trick of not letting people look at it too closely - I imagine the blurriness is more apparent at a larger size!

Wulf

[thirdxacharm06]

Well what happened was some how my setting on the camera got changed from auto to something else cause the camera to not fire right away. It was really weird and I realized it too late I've been using auto for now until I really learn what I'm doing.

[zappo]

Well as already said, out of focus is out of focus. I tried a lot of techniques for that and there is really nothing that can fix it. Sad but true.