You can purchase all the cameras money can buy, use the best lens in the world, but the bitter truth is that you have to follow some specific rules and guidelines for you to get sharp and focused photos at any point in time. Majorly there are some key areas one needs to pay attention to when it comes to photography because they are responsive only if we apply them correctly.
There are four things that need to be considered when shooting:
- The shutter speed
- Focus
- Moving subject
- Still subject
Once all of these rules are applied you find yourself having very sharp photos regardless of whether it is a still or moving subject.
In cases of still subjects, that means when they’re static like architecture, landscape, or any subject that is not moving, your settings which is your focal length should be 1- 3 of the shutter speed. If you’re shooting a landscape at 1/300mm your speed should be trice of the length (1/300mmx3 = 1/900sec) this is to fight against camera shake in the process.
The focus can be of any but it also depends on whether you are shooting at single autofocus (AF-S) or manual.
In the case of a moving subject which involves you shooting people moving like, sport, street photography, etc, in order to catch the subject in action, that is to freeze the action, do that with 1/500sec and beyond. When you’re shooting sports and your subject moves with speed then you can go above 1/1000sec, and with this, you definitely use continuous autofocus (AF-C) which will help you select point in each movement distance to constantly focus on the subject.
Aside from all the things mentioned above, there are other things that can affect the desired sharpness and focus of your photos ranging from:
Gears which comprise of lens, camera, etc. But your lens also plays a significant role here because it can determine the sharpness of your photos. Some lenses are very fast and they give a shallow depth of field and using this lens on an old or middle-level camera can make it difficult to focus. For instance, if you use a kit lens on a Canon mark camera, there will certainly be some kind of imbalance.
