Trouble in getting image sharpness

sushmoan

As I try to click a moving object, I seldom get a picture that is sharp. Recently I have taken moving bike with shutter speed 1/1250 aperture f4 and due to this I had to move to higher ISO to 1000+. But if I reduce the ISO I get darker pictures for the same other settings. Please, help me through this friends.

bruto

I am presuming first of all that you do not have sharpness problems with still objects. If you do, then the first thing to do is to check your camera, lens, and holding technique.

Assuming this is a motion issue, the first thing to do is to find out what actual shutter speeds different moving objects require. This will vary not only with what you're shooting, but with whether you're standing still or panning the subject. You can get away with a slower shutter if you follow your subject, but it takes practice.

Unfortunately if the exposure requires a high ISO, that's what you're stuck with. Your aperture is already wide open, so either you slow the shutter or stick with the high ISO.

Make sure you're using the best AF settings for a moving subject. You must use AFC, and you're probably best off with either single point or dynamic area focusing, with as small a number of points as you can get away with. The more dynamic area points you enable, the easier it will be to maintain focus on a moving object, but the more likely focus will be slightly off the mark. If your subject is fairly large on the screen, a wide dynamic area may settle for an extended limb, wing tip, etc., which is not the focal point you started out after.

If you can, use burst mode and shoot three or four pictures in rapid sequence. If there is any problem with camera shake, the middle shots of a sequence will often be better than the first and last.

If you're having trouble homing in on a subject and nailing focus before it's too late, try zooming out a little. It's easier to find a subject in a wider field, and you can crop in later.

Also, don't forget to insure that the focus point is where you mean it to be. The D3x00 and D5x00 family do not have a lock on the rear control, so it's easy to find the focus point has accidentally moved.

Shooting moving subjects is always a challenge. But the D5300 has a pretty good focusing system, and relatively good high ISO too, so you should be able to get there with practice.

e.t.a.I would add one other thing, which is that some lenses simply do not focus as fast as others. The 55-300, for example, though a decent lens in many ways, is slow to hit focus. Fancier,expensive, fast lenses will focus faster, but at a price, of course. If you have a slower lens, expect a lot of misses, and shoot more bursts, as it may take a couple of shots for the lens to catch up. That's especially true if you are using release priority and AFC. The shutter may fire before focus is achieved, but the lens will continue to adjust as you're shooting. Even in focus priority, AFC may allow earlier shutter firing and less precision, so fire away and erase the bad ones.