Need advice! Shutter problem??

Hi! I just bought a nikon d5100 to start in photography and learn to take overall better photos of my children. I have been watching numerous videos and tutorials explaining the basics, P,A,S,M. I have general understanding of the modes. I want to photograph my young children in aperture mode with natural lighting. I like the look of the blurred background. My problem is I can't get a clear focused photo. I have increased my shutter speed but when I do the my photos come out very dark even when I increase the ISO. Granted the lighting in my home isn't great. I want to learn how to manually do this not in auto or sport mode. Any advice?

You will need to post a picture with exif data so we can help. No way to tell you what's going on without the exposure data.

I'm just guessing with out a sample photo, but you might be low on light. I'm also assuming you get a decent picture in auto, possibly with flash. Try P mode without a flash. If its blurry, you don't have enough light. So try jacking up the iso until you get a non-blurry P mode picture. Keep that iso. I understand aperture is important for what you want to do, but in aperture priority, the camera will select any shutter speed it needs to make a good exposure. It may very well select a speed that is too slow for you to hand hold and you will get blurry pictures. For starting out, I recommend shutter priority. That way you choose the shutter speed and avoid the risk of the camera choosing too slow of a speed. Set it for a minimum speed appropriate for your lens and never go lower. I don't know what lens you have, but lets say don't go lower than 1/30 sec. As you raise the shutter speed, the camera will lower the aperture # which is what you want to blur the background. If you are low on light, you won't be able to raise the shutter speed very much before hitting your lens' maximum aperture (lowest f number). At that point your camera should indicate that its not happy with exposure. If you shoot anyway, you will get dark pictures.

In general, if the camera is not broke, shaky pictures means too low of a shutter speed. Dark pictures means not enough light for the settings chosen.

Welcome to the forums.

Put a picture up and let's see what we can do to help

I'm a newbie with no prior experience rather than a point and shoot. This is my d5100. Here I had my shutter at 1/200, f/5.6, ISO 800, how can I achieve a tac sharp photo? I only have the kit lens. I believe am not setting my focus right because her shirt looks more in focus than her face.

Another question I have is if I'm shooting in M, what would I set my focus too so the camera doesn't take over and focus on other subjects? I am really trying to get the most natural light photos, I try not to use the flash. Thanks for the advice!

Hey there and welcome to the forum, just quickly when you are setting your focus for a certain area you should always set it at AF/S then it will not move. But then you do have choices of where you can focus on (focus points). Below is a guideline.



Each of those squares are focus points, and depending on where you would like your focus you select or move the camera so that the selected focus point is on the eyes.
As for settings if you had the focus on the right spot and a good stance the last shot might have worked for you. Focus is the key to some pics, if you can achieve focus on the eyes then you are winning.
A longer focal length 80mm+ will help with DOF.

Try to set single point focus and then either point the center dot exactly where you want it to focus, hold the shutter button half way, then frame the shot, and push it all the way in to take the pic. Or as muzza pointed out, use the d-pad buttons to move that single point focus to the focus dot that you want it to focus on and shoot.