DSLRUsers.com

I seem to be having blurring problems with my D70 and/or lenses. I have the 18-70 and 70-300 kit lenses. I recently came back from a few weeks in Europe and noticed that pretty much every shot is somewhat blurred. I'm quite disappointed.

Now before you start judging my understanding of such issues - I can assure you that my shutter speed was fast enough with lost of light (even in the sun) and I was using the 18-70 lens for pretty much most of my shots. There is no reason for so many blurred shots. Now at this point you may be thinking it was poor handling that caused camera shake, but my tripod shots weren’t any better either.

I’m beginning to think there is something wrong with either the lens or the camera itself. Has anyone had similar problems or know what could be the problem?

Hi-Voltage.

High-Voltage,

As suggested in the lens test thread it is not always feasible to give a diagnosis on the internet but if you choose to wheel the corpse into Court by posting an example or two (possibly with different lenses) some of us may be tempted to have a stab at it.

Cheers, sorry to hear of your disappointment.

hi Hi-Voltage

its a shame to hear about your photo problems.



Did you use the Digital Vari-programs settings?, cause the camera chooses the focus for you.

otherwise, whater are your usual focus settings?, i came from using a F4 with single focus point to the D70 with 5 points took awhile to get use to. although is just stick with AF-S single area.

i believe there is also a focusing chart, that can help to diagnose the problem.

also do a seach for backfocus, its been discussed in this forum before.

can you post some example photos?

Was the focus area set to center (or whatever area you were anticipating it to be..)? This has been the most common cause for mysteriously blurry shots with my D70
It can happen fairly easily too so I leave the focus area selector locked always now..
More technical details and a few examples would help
Real shame that it happened on a overseas trip

Frink, I've had mine in locked but transfering from bag results in it getting unlocked at times. It's a real pain!

Hi Hi Voltage.

How do you expect us to diagnose the issues unless we can see some examples of what you're talking about?Please also include your EXIF data when you post these images.

Also, please put your location into your profile.

Finally, usually these sorts of issues are operator error issues, genrally caused through a failure to fully comprehend how the camera operates in certain circumstances, or misubnderstanding the operational characteristics of certain features of the camera.

Please don't misunderstand what I'm saying here - it's in no way intended to be a criticism of you - the D70 is a very complex camera and takes quite some time to understand; we've all been where you are, but we need more details from you in order to be able to provide you with meaningful assistance.

Hi Voltage. By any chance did you shoot in RAW

Thanks for the replies. I was in a hurry last time, so I couldn't upload any images.

Here's an image of Notre Dame in Paris:





Here's the same image at 100%:





The EXIF data is:
Exposure: 1/125 at f/14
Exposure Program: Aperture Priority
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 34mm
Lens: 18.0-70.0 mm f/3.5-4.5


As you can see at 100% the image is quite blurred.

To answer some of the other questions:
- The image was shot in RAW.
- I don't use the Digital Vari-programs.
- It looks like human error, i.e. not holding the camera steady, but I'm pretty confident that I was. Might blur a few, but not all.
- I only use the centre focus - i don’t like the multi focus points - I prefer to focus and then recompose the shot.
- I haven't been locking the focus area, I guess I should - I did find it would change occasionally on it's own, but I don't think this was the cause my problems.


This is just 1 image - I can post more if needed. I have another shot of Notre Dame, which was taken at a different time of day, and I have the same blurring problem.

Thanks.
Hi-Voltage

Hi-voltage,

Maybe it's my eyes, but your crop doesn't look THAT blurred to me - it's a little soft, but a little sharpening in post-processing would improve it a lot...

The only suggestion I could offer for this photo would be that for long-range photos such as this one I would probably have opened the aperture up to f8 or even f6.3 to gain a faster shutter speed. That would have reduced the effect of camera shake tremendously...

Post some more photos to see if there's a trend though...

hi Hi-Voltage

yep, definitely looks soft.
I don't see any motion blurr, so its not camera handling.

I dont have the 18-70 kit lens so can not comment on it.

Hhave you tried sharpening the image??

 BTW, looks like a image with great potential..

100% crops handheld images will always have a tendency to be slightly soft at the edge of subjects. Can you post a few more shots. As Leek has already said, they don't look too bad and you can't expect them always to be 100% sharp around the edges. Even with film based cameras photos could look soft around the edges, but then again with film most of us never looked at it at such a level of magnification.

This has been said before but I will restate - the nature of the sensor is such that there tends to be a softness apparent in most pics - this is the nature of digital photography on the majority of digital cameras. A touch of sharpening will make this pic pop at 100% - look at it this way - viewing the pic on screen at the normal viewing size of around 33% will show a sharp pic. Take it up to 100% and lo and behold the sharp pic is blurred.

Gee, Im no PS expert, but in about 2 minutes playing with USM, I was able to get the 100% crop pretty damm sharp. I had to use a little more than I usually do, but that is probably because I use some in camera sharpening. For a D70 image at 100%, it looks OK to me.