D7000 Taking Blurry Photos

HI Nikonites.

I need your help - I've had my D7000 since October 2012 - Bought it used, and I've never had any issues with it taking blurry photos, until this past weekend. It's auto focusing (it beeps, the focus points are working) but the image it shoots is blurry. Some are blurrier than others, but either way, I've got weddings coming up to shoot and this is an intolerable issue for such occasions obviously.

I'm all ears on suggestions as to why this may have started happening. I also attached an image from yesterday's shoot to show the subtle soft blur that is occurring on just about every single image. (I would say 1 out of every 5 are sharp).

HUGE THANKS in advance for your help !!!

With that lens, at that shutter speed, you should be getting tack sharp photos. Shooting at f4 concerns me a little though. Have you tried the same shot shooting at f8 or f5.6? This looks like you were shooting in broad daylight, so I'm wondering why you would choose to shoot at such a high shutter speed. Really not necessary. And...you should be shooting at your native ISO for your camera, which, I think, is ISO 100. What about a tripod....have you tried that? You could also be getting camera shake, too, if you're shooting hand held. Is your sensor clean? Lenses clean? Just some things to think about.
Hope you get it sorted out. Let us know, will you? Thanks.

If you load the image in ViewNX or Capture NX-D, does it show a focus point when you select that option? A red square should appear where the cam focused.

Maybe it is me but I don't find anything in that shot which is sharp. Unless it is cropped and there's another part of the shot that is sharp, either the cam shot between focus or did not focus that lens accurately and placed it somewhere in front of (or maybe behind) your model.

If the AF is not correct, you could adjust it for that lens with AF fine-tune but problematic in your case is that it works correct at times while other times it doesn't. When you fine-tune AF, it might just reverse that.

But you first need to find out if those shots are in focus according the cam or if it took them without. Does this problem occur with all lenses?

Hi all! Thanks for the replies! Agreed that f4 was a little silly, but I was playing with settings to see what my results looked like. For most of the shoot I was at ISO 100 and shooting at F8 and still had the same blur. Can't recall shutter speed but it was up there (maybe around 800-1000, at times up to 2000).

Admittedly I have not cleaned my sensor in some time. Could that cause something like this? Multiple focus points were focusing before I snapped the shot, but you are correct - no part of this image was in focus.

I did snap a few other test shots from the beach around me and my camera seemed to be focusing on things near me, but not far away.

The same blurry issue was happening on my 50mm 1.4

There truthfully seemed to be no real rhyme or reason for this
It was all over the place.

Which focus mode are you using? Auto, S, d9, d21, d39 and 3d?

AF-continuous? AF-single? [FONT=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]AF-auto?[/FONT]

[FONT=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]Have you tried manual focus? If so then how did it look?

I am going to ask the most basic question now. Are you sure you had both auto focus switches set to AF? The ones on the lens and on the camera?

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I was using AF-S and yes, camera was set to AF on both lens, and body.
I did not try manual focus

It looks wrong, to me it is looking like the camera has focussed on nothing, light was low so that may hinder it. Use centre spot focus and see what happens. Also practice practice on anything in low light before the wedding as you do not want this happening.

the d7k had some issues with backfocus. print out a focus chart and check the focus on a tripod with the vr off. if it is off see if you can adjust accordingly using the in-built AF fine tune feature.

it just seems odd that this started happening out of nowhere! I've changed nothing in terms of settings. Could a firmware update fix this? A sensor cleaning? I've shot in light like this a lot and never ran into this issue, so I doubt that was hindering it. =/

Englischdude: Maybe a silly question but what is "vr"?

Maybe the AF needs to be fine tuned?

https://photographylife.com/how-to-calibrate-lenses

Thank you AC016 I will try that.

I have been calling around to some local repair shops and each one has told me they cannot repair blurry image issues, and that it will have to go to Nikon. One gentleman told me he experienced a similar issue with one of his cameras, and even sent it to Nikon and they sent it back in the same condition. he finally gave up and bought a new camera. I am really hoping that my camera is not going to end up being a piece of junk because of this

I am going to set it up on a tripod tonight and take some test shots, and I guess figure out how to do this AF calibration, as well as seeing if I can get it to focus in Manual mode.

I'm thinking the AF Motor is going bad in either the lens you're using or the camera body. Can you get good, consistent, focus using a different lens? What would really help is having a lens without a built-in focus motor, an AF-D variant lens for example.

....

Take a photo that is manually focussed and show us here?

I have never seen as camera out of focus like this which needs fixing and or upgrades. Something is not right if you ask me.

Scott Murray said:

I have never seen as camera out of focus like this which needs fixing and or upgrades. Something is not right if you ask me.

Click to expand...

Scott when you say "something is not right" are you referring to something being broken? or me doing something wrong? (I'm actually PRAYING its the latter of the two lol)

I am going to run some tests tonight and document what settings I'm on, and what results I get. I will post them here!

I'd do a quick test to see if your camera and lens focus anywhere at all. Put a newspaper on a table with good light above it and take a picture at an angle, focussing somewhere in the middle. Then you will see if any text, either in front, or behind the focus point, is sharp. Then try manual focussing, as others mentioned.

Felisek said:

I'd do a quick test to see if your camera and lens focus anywhere at all. Put a newspaper on a table with good light above it and take a picture at an angle, focussing somewhere in the middle. Then you will see if any text, either in front, or behind the focus point, is sharp. Then try manual focussing, as others mentioned.

Click to expand...

I did some tests on items up close on a desk, and it focused just fine. (i don't have those examples on me at work, but I'll do some distance tests tonight and share some examples of what I'm seeing)

kristentyler said:

Scott when you say "something is not right" are you referring to something being broken? or me doing something wrong? (I'm actually PRAYING its the latter of the two lol)

I am going to run some tests tonight and document what settings I'm on, and what results I get. I will post them here!

Click to expand...

Kristen I have looked at your website, you know how to focus so something is not right. Maybe you are broken or 'something' is broken but it isn't right

Hey for kicks sake take manual photos of ordinary objects, I am just wanting to see where the focus is or isn't. In your only pic here there is no focal point.