Blurry pictures as of late??

I have had the d7000 for awhile now and have always loved it. However, it seems as though over the last few months, I have not been getting sharp images, in decent lighting, with the lens already internally sharpened to +9. I'm desperate to know what's going on and there is not anywhere in the area that deals with Nikons. HELP!

juzwiak77 said:

I have had the d7000 for awhile now and have always loved it. However, it seems as though over the last few months, I have not been getting sharp images, in decent lighting, with the lens already internally sharpened to +9. I'm desperate to know what's going on and there is not anywhere in the area that deals with Nikons. HELP!

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When you say that the lens is "Internally sharpened to +9", do you mean the focus adjustment setting? That may be the problem, it is for micro-adjusting the lens focus, so you may set it to over-compensate. I'd return that setting to 0 and see how you get on, then use the proper methods for fine tuning lens focus.

juzwiak77 said:

I have had the d7000 for awhile now and have always loved it. However, it seems as though over the last few months, I have not been getting sharp images, in decent lighting, with the lens already internally sharpened to +9. I'm desperate to know what's going on and there is not anywhere in the area that deals with Nikons. HELP!

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1. Back off the Sharpness setting to +6; I've never seen much improvement beyond +6, or +7 at most, on this setting.
2. You could be suffering from front/back focus on one, or several, of your lenses. Have you checked for it? How to Check for Front/Back Focus
3. We can't see the EXIF data when you host your photos on an external site; what aperture (f/stop) were you using for that shot?
4. Do you perform any sharpening in post processing?

Yes...I use to have back focus problems, but I did resolve it. I tried to sharpen in my program but when I do, I get grain. My settings for this picture were:f/4, 1/60, iso 1600. That seems high and I may have bumped it too much somehow. I was only standing 15 feet away maybe?? The entire picture is out of focus and I was using auto focus. Close ups seem very nice.

juzwiak77 said:

Yes...I use to have back focus problems, but I did resolve it. I tried to sharpen in my program but when I do, I get grain. My settings for this picture were:f/4, 1/60, iso 1600. That seems high and I may have bumped it too much somehow. I was only standing 15 feet away maybe?? The entire picture is out of focus and I was using auto focus. Close ups seem very nice.View attachment 152110

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That's a great shot, and not everything is out of focus. At F4 this is what one would expect. The face the eyes are in perfect focus. I don't see what the problem is.

Not this picture oft he bride. This is a great shot. I love it. The blurry ones are the one I first posted above. Here's another example (sorry it's sideways)of the blurry ones I am referring to

Blacktop said:

That's a great shot, and not everything is out of focus. At F4 this is what one would expect. The face the eyes are in perfect focus. I don't see what the problem is.

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Have to agree with Pete; that shot looks great to me and what I would expect from f/4. Not seeing the problem either.
In fact it might be just a touch over-sharpened. Maybe...

Plus Nine pushes the focus AWAY from the camera. In the first pic, it looks like the wall stuff might be more in focus than the people. That's back focus. If you had back focus problems before, then your internal adjustment should have been a negative number.

Take a steady shot with high shutter speed and wide open aperture shooting down a tape measure or a bookshelf. See if ANYTHING is in focus. If there is a spot where stuff is in focus, then you have to adjust that lens to move the actual focus point back to the point you intended.

juzwiak77 said:

Not this picture oft he bride. This is a great shot. I love it. The blurry ones are the one I first posted above. Here's another example (sorry it's sideways)of the blurry ones I am referring to.

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I'm seeing some noise but that's easy to clean up and no big deal.

The other thing I noticed right away is how the whole shot looks soft which makes me think this is simply a case of motion blur. You shot this at 1/60s which is sufficient assuming you have good technique, but faster certainly would have been better, IMO.

Hope you don't mind but here's your shot after applying the Motion Blur filter of Photoshop. After that it got a very light passing over with Unsharp Mask. Oh, and a rotation. Total time spent -- About 1 minute:
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And here it is after color-balancing and so forth:
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I had a few about a week ago that were shot in bright daylight at f8 that came out pretty blurry and didn't make sense. The only thing i can figure was i had VR on. It bothered me enough i started to worry if maybe something got inside the camera when changing lenses or something. Shot enough since then and everything seems fine now.

Here's the AF calibration settings menu. See how the camera is at the bottom, and attempting to move the focus closer to the camera makes it a negative number. If you adjusted with a plus number, you may have pushed the focal point behind your subject.

D'oh! I just realized you may have been talking about internal SHARPENING and not internal AF FINE TUNING. Sorry for the confusion.

Hope you don't mind, but I had a go at your first pic, too. When I blow a shot, I just try to make it look old-timey, as if that were the intent all along.

Something that I have not seen asked yet....Are you shooting in RAW or JPEG?

Is this with all your lenses?? No: maybe AFtuning can help, otherwise...


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1) try shooting at a higher shutter speed and adjusting the rest of the setting accordingly. you might have more noise from the ISO but removing it in post is quite easy.

2) Your camera/lenses are front/backfocusing and you have to AF tune the camera. there are known issues with the nikon d7000 focus system so I would try this next.

3) depth of field is important too, so depending on what kind of look you're going for you have to select the right f/stop

As others have recommended
. If you are not you shooting RAW do so. RAW gives you plenty of flexibility with exposure.
. You may have an AF problem, set your lens at max aperture and shoot an inclined scale aiming the focus point at centre - say 6" mark on a 12" scale. Check where the sharpest focus is and adjust the fine tuning accordingly.
. The blurry images may also be due to motion blur. Try shooting above 1/250.