A couple of comments:
DPI does not affect the photo until you print it. DPI stands for “dots per inch” and computers ignore that when displaying on the screen. The resolution of the attached picture is 1500 × 1052. If you are printing a 4″ x 6″ photo (standard around here) that would be about 250 dpi. The fuzziness is not due to dpi in this case, although depending on the resolution and size of the print, it could affect it once printed.
An aperture of f/5 at 41mm should not result in too shallow a depth of field for a group that size and at that distance. If the aperture was too wide open (small f/ number) I would expect either the people or the grass in front of the people to be out of focus.
It is also not due to camera shake or subject movement as the shutter speed is quite fast and you are obviously not shooting from a moving vehicle. 🙂
Here are a few possible reasons why it might be fuzzy:
1) The camera focused in the wrong place. It looks like the grass in front may be a bit more in focus than the people.
2) Image stabilisation was turned on when using a fast shutter speed or when on a tripod.
3) The more difficult lighting situation required heavy processing. Ideally you would use a large reflector to reflect some of the bright light back onto the subject, or use a “fill-flash” (a flash on a low power setting) to do the same thing.
4) The lens quality. This is a kit lens and has its limitations, and may be a bit softer than a higher quality (and more expensive!) lens. If this is a heavily cropped image, it could be just that.
5) JPG compression. If you are shooting in JPG with a small or lower quality setting, that would not help. Make sure you are shooting in either the highest quality jpg, or better yet RAW.
Most likely it is a combination of 1 and 3, and possibly 2 and 5.
- This reply was modified 54 years, 9 months ago by .