Ohhhh myyyyyy goodnessss!!!
My kids were asleep by 7pm tonight!! on their own! It’s a christmas miracle in the middle of summer. I’m not sure what I owe this treat to, but I am about to get my netflix on! Keep your fingers crossed, no one wakes up the second I sit down to watch my show!
But first, let’s get to the real reason you’re here…
The number one complaint I hear from my students is that their images are blurry. I can’t blame them! You actually remember to take the camera out or you’ve downloaded your free ebook 10 photo projects for ANYONE with ANY camera and you’re totally inspired to get pictures of your kid, you chase your wild thing around the house, the yard, the playground, the beach, everywhere. Willing them to look at you or do something super cute so you can take the best picture ever. Finally, you snap the shot, and you are so pumped to check it out on the back of your camera, and- blahhhhh- your kid’s a blob!
I’m here to help with that! but before I do that, if you aren’t shooting in manual mode, you should definitely think about doing that. I’ll give you 6 reasons you should be shooting in manual mode. Go check ’em out!
5 tricks for sharper images of your
kids
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- Raise your shutter speed above 1/125 (the higher the better!!) The trick is to have your camera work so fast, there isn’t time to let any movement in. If you’re not shooting in manual mode, try setting your camera to S and adjusting just the shutter speed, it will set the other options for the correct exposure.
- Raise your aperture a little bit. My all-time favorite lens is my 35mm 1.4, and I love shooting wide open at 1.4, but when I am chasing wild things around there are times when it helps to raise that to a 2.0 or 2.8. Also, depending on how far you are from your subject, raising the aperture will ensure more of your subject is nice and sharp! You could go even higher, but you may lose your blurred out background.
- Change your focal settings. Set your camera to ‘single focal mode’ rather than ‘focal area mode’. When you leave your camera in focal area mode, your camera chooses where it would like to focus rather than letting you make the decision. Often times, the issue isn’t necessarily blur, it’s the fact that the focus landed on the wrong subject.
- Hold your camera steady. I mean, this seems obvious, but you’re chasing a kid.
- Clean your lens. This may seem obvious, in fact, it’s one of my tips for taking better pictures of your kids with your smartphone. The reality is though, kids have grimy hands and they grab everything!! If you’re consistently getting blurry pictures and you can’t figure out why, try cleaning your lens!
xoxo,
lorrin
come hang out with me!!
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[…] your focal point. this is useful when you’re trying to get sharper images in general. instead of setting your camera to focal area mode, set your camera to single focal point, and […]