All Pictures are Blurry, Help!

[petarde]

Last year I bought a EOS Rebel T5/EOS 1200D dslr camera.  I have read the manual inside and out and I still have trouble taking a picture that isn't blurry.  I have both the 75-300 mm and 18-55 mm lens.

I have searched information online and have tried several different settings with the camera but nothing works.

Help!  I would really love to use this camera,  Thank you!

[kvbarkley]

Can you post an example of a blurry picture?

[ScottyP]

There are 3 main kinds of blur:  1.) out of focus blur, 2.) camera shake blur and 3.) moving subject blur.  

Failure to to focus would happen intermittently both indoors and in bright sunlight. Unless you have accidentally clicked your lens from AF autofocus to MF manual focus, in which case all your images will be blurry. 

A fast shutter prevents #2 and 3.  A slow one causes both. A fast shutter speed is easy in bright sunlight but indoors or at night your camera may struggle to get enough light so left on its own to make decisions it may slow the shutter too much, giving you blur.  

Then there is another possibility, that the image files are in focus but you are just seeing things as blurry in the viewfinder. That would suggest you have accidentally moved the tiny diopter dial on the viewfinder. Make sure it is dialed into your eyesight. 

[ScottyP]

If the problem is not just out of focus shots or a diopter dial needing tweaked the most common problem is motion blur. 

Camera shake blur is caused by inability to handhold a shot at too slow a shutter speed. The rule of thumb is you need the reciprocal shutter speed of your lens length.  A 35mm lens needs a speed of 1/35 or faster. A 100mm lens needs 1/100 or faster. But that is for full frame cameras. The smaller sensor of your Rebel gives a 1.6x focal length boost to your images (actually it crops the field of view but that is less easy to think about). That means you do the rule with 1.6x the lens length and a 100mm lens needs a 1/160 shutter speed, etc. 

Image Stabilization will help you handhold at slower shutter speeds if your subject is motionless but it cannot help with the other blur, the subject motion blur. 

Subject motion blur is just that look you get in an image of a runner or a fast car etc where the subject is kind of smeared as it is moving through the frame. You might occasionally want a little of this kind of blur to make a dramatic action shot but you want to avoid it the rest of the time. This is purely trial and error. Generally a person walking can be frozen into a sharp image at like 1/320. A runner may need 1/400 to 1/1000. Faster things need faster shutter. Even a person sitting still for a picture will be moving slightly. Look at the eyes to see if you are in focus. The eye and eyelashes should be sharp. 

[petarde]

Thank you, I did finally figure it out

[diverhank]

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@petarde wrote:
Thank you, I did finally figure it out

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Care to share what was wrong?