Finally realized my photos were blurry from shutter speed not focus

I spent 6 months thinking I just had bad lenses or shaky hands. Turns out I was shooting at 1/15th of a second on a tripod with a timer and still getting blur. A guy on a forum asked if I had vibration reduction turned off and that tipped me off. Checked my settings and sure enough, the camera was picking up floor vibrations from my apartment's washer running. Now I bump ISO higher instead of dropping speed below 1/60. Anyone else discover a dumb setting mistake after way too long?

2 comments

2 Comments

troythompson10d ago

idk man that washer thing is wild, I mean floor vibrations from a washing machine? That's some next level detective work. I had a similar thing where I couldn't figure out why my landscapes were soft and it turned out I was leaving image stabilization on while it was on a tripod. The thing was literally fighting itself trying to correct for nothing. Felt like an idiot when I finally turned it off and the sharpness came back.

terry_lewis2110d ago

Does anyone else find that half the time it's the dumbest little things causing the biggest headaches? I stopped trying to figure out noise in my long exposures for months, swapped gear, changed settings, the whole deal. Finally realized my stabilizing my camera bag against the tripod was transferring my own heartbeat through the pouch.