why does my camera (EOS REBEL XS) take blurry pictures

[plc4d]

why does my camera (EOS REBEL XS) TAKE BLURRY PICTURES?

[Waddizzle]

"I also got a 75-300mm Tramron lens and it will only shoot to 200mm."

If it stops working above 200mm, what is the range of "f/stops" listed on the lens?  It might be written as a ratio like this " 1:4.5 - 1:6.3 ".

The built in flash on your camera is fairly weak.  It has a range of 10 feet, or less.  And, because the built-in flash is so small, and does not raise up very high, some long lenses will cast a shadow into the photo, which I suspect your 70-300mm lens may do. 

Your 70-300mm lens is fairly "long", which refers to the focal lengths, for your camera body.  That range of zoom is considered to be medium telephoto  I would suggest getting a "standard" range of zoom lens, which for your camera body are focal lengths ranging roughly from about 18-55mm.

[Billyboiam14]

[ebiggs1]

Your picture if simply out of focus.  Make sure the lens is on AF and not MF.

[kvbarkley]

It might have been hard to tell because at that party it looks like the photographer might have been out of focus, too. 8^)

[ebiggs1]

[RobertTheFat]

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@ebiggs1 wrote:

Your picture if simply out of focus.  Make sure the lens is on AF and not MF.

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I've had that happen to me. Not a pleasant sensation. Fortunately, the one time it really mattered, I was working with a backup photographer.

It brings up an interesting question: How hard would it be to have the lens tell the camera whether it was set to AF or not? The lens already communicates with the camera in more complex ways than that. The camera could then warn the photographer that the lens wasn't able to respond. For that matter, how come the camera doesn't infer it anyway? It has to be able to recognize that the image isn't coming into focus. Am I missing something obvious?

[kvbarkley]

Isn't that what the focus confirmation light and beep are for?

[Billyboiam14]

Issue has been resolved. Thank you all.

[Crazydoglady]

Thanks for the info. I tried those links you posted and none of the YouTube videos are available to watch. They are all private. You seem to know what your talking about so i wanted to ask you. I got a canon rebel sl2 and I'm using a canon 75-300mm lens. I'm trying to take pictures of wildlife. Birds and monkeys at the moment. And all my pictures are turning out blurry. My lens is on AF. All pictures are outside. I have my focus selected to the one center square. I'm holding the shutter down half way and it looks perfectly focused and then when i look at the picture after its blurry. How high should my shutter speed be? I just changed it to the highest speed. I would really appreciate some help on this subject. I'm new to this and I'm finding this Camera to be very frustrating.

[kvbarkley]

At 300 mm, the shutter speed should be at least 1/500 for your camera.

Can you post some of the blurry images so we might be able to diagnose the issue?