Blurry photos

hannahpickering

I am a complete newbie to photography. I've had my camera for about a year now. The images have now started to be blurry when taken and are also blurry when when looking through the eye piece. I have checked other forums on how to fix this but nothing has worked. Any ideas on how to fix it?

bruto

I am assuming the kit zoom lens here. If you have another lens, or if you have more than one lens, the very first thing to do is to try the other lens to see if it works.

First of all, determine if the lens has for some reason stopped auto focusing. Take it off, and reinstall it, and make sure the A/M switch on it is fully set to A. Sometimes dirty contacts or poor seating, or a bit of jiggling on the switch, will stop it working right.

Now, in the display, make sure that the AF is set so it is on, and if you are using a single point auto focus rather than the auto area, make sure that the point is centered. It is very easy to get it off center by accident. Use the [OK] button to recenter it. If you're using any focus mode other than auto area (which by itself can sometimes miss focus), you should see the starting point light up with a little red light in the finder.

Now aim the camera at a far-off obstacle, take a picture, and observe whether you can see the front end of the lens rotating. If you don't see that, then aim the camera at a very close object such as a wall a few feet away, and do it again. Did it visibly adjust?

If you are getting no action from the auto focus, switch the lens back to "M" and try manually focusing it. If it now works and gets a moderately well focused picture (it's hard to be precise in that little viewfinder), then the lens and camera are working at least to some degree. Make sure you never try to manually focus the lens when it's set to A, where it should stay locked. If you force it it will break.

If you still cannot get it to auto focus, switch the camera to Live View. This uses a very different internal mechanism for focusing. If the lens still does not auto focus, then the problem is in the lens. If it now does, then it may be a problem in the viewfinder's auto focus mechanism which might need service.

If the lens does not auto focus in either viewfinder or live view mode, then take it off once more, and clean the electronic contacts on both the lens and the camera with some isopropyl alcohol and a swab, and try once more. If it works then, you're done. If it does not, then the next step is probably to try borrowing another lens, perhaps from some photo dealer, and see if a different lens works.

For eyepiece sharpness, remember that there is a diopter adjustment to the right side of the eyepiece. This is probably not your main problem, but make sure that you adjust that so that the information display and the red focus points you see in the viewfinder are sharp. That will give you the best finder focus.