Crappy Tripod or Crappy Photographer?

Hi Everyone. I'm a novice, so that should explain whatever silly things I might say or ask.

I'm using the starter Rebel T3. I recently bought a Sunpak Ultra 4STM, simply because it was very inexpensive and I figured that something was better than nothing. I didn't expect miracles, but what I'm finding is that my shots are no better WITH the tripod than my handheld shots. I've been shooting outdoors, mainly in the woods, using a remote. My shots all look universally poor, as if there were some degree of motion, regardless of Ap or Tv settings. I took hundreds of shots, none of which were acceptable to me. I shot an entire wedding was very pleased with the results. What's up here?

Could it be the movement of the camera itself that may be causing this? It doesn't seem reasonable that the tripod could be that bad. Reviews on Adorama were generally quite high. Is it something I'm overlooking? I threw away almost everything, but here are two that I haven't yet deleted. Thank you in advance for you help.

It looks like you're just not used to focusing on a tripod. If you look at the 1st photo, there is that white straw coming from the top right leaf that is in focus. If you look at the 2nd photo, the roots of the tree near the camera is in focus. You're gonna have to use a smaller aperture in this photo. I think you just need to practice a little more.

Thank you for your reply. That could certainly be the issue. I'm confused, though, because I haven't experienced this until I started shooting these subjects, i.e., out of thousands of shots- sports, portraits, macros- these recent forest shots are the only really terrible ones. Also, for the leaf shot, I was focused on the left-most leaf, but I got a white straw on the right. Don't really get that.

It's hard to say what happened. Did you use manual or auto focus?

I would tend to agree with the previous poster but I would also state that I was in a similar situation recently. I had a Sunpak 9002DX that worked wonderful for my SX100 P&S but performed miserably with my 60D. The weight was just too much for my little Sunpak. Specifically I was shooting the moon though which is a difficult subject to begin with but I was also getting better shots handheld with image stabilization enabled than with my Sunpak.

I moved on to the Manfrotto 055XPROB and the 322RC2 head and it has been worlds better for shooting the moon than the Sunpak. I can now zoom in in live view and manually focus much more easily than I could have with the shakiness of the Sunpak.

In your case though, some of the problem that you are having is with focus admittedly. That and your Sunpak looks to be of higher quality than my old 9002 so it is probably more stable.

Thank you!

You may have left image stabilization on the lens? (bad idea from a tripod.)

Thank you for bringing that up. I did make that mistake, then corrected it on later photos. Didn't see much difference. If this is a focusing issue, I don't even know where to start, because some of my shots look great, others look completely horrible, but I can't figure out why. It's really frustrating. Any adovice on that would be a big help!

Looks like you just aren't focusing correctly.

'some of my shots look great, others look completely horrible'

in focus vs out of focus. On tripod for landscapes, I tend to set single point AF; focus via af in viewfinder, and then switch to live view to verify composition. Does Magic Lantern support T3? If so; install that and you will find Focus Zebras to be a godsend for live view manual focus. (What I miss most about my t3i)

First thing I'd do is a test in the calm and comfort of your own home, one shot on a tripod then take the camera off and take another shot with the same settings, then compare the two.

If they are both OK then there is nothing wrong with your kit, you may just have missed focus or something in the "heat of battle" !

It could be a tripod stability issue but IMO probably not. you seem to have stripped your EXIF data so I can't see what your shutter speed was?

The other option is some setting like blur in Lightroom or whatever conversion/editing software you use?

I'm such a novice that I don't know what you mean by stripping my EXIF data. I used the Canon DPP software and converted these from RAW to JPEG. I always shoot in RAW. I'm not sure how to keep the data attached to the image.

As "Frosty" said

There is an amazing amount of information in the full EXIF data that can help us determine what you have done. Two key pieces of information is to tell us exactly how you are focusing and exactly where the focus point is located.

What was the ISO, Shutter speed and Aperture settings on the pictures?

Data for the forest shot:
Ap Mode
Tv 1/30
Av f/8.0
ISO 400 (auto)
Eval metering
Lens EF-S 18-55
RAW

Leaves:

Av mode
Tv 1/8
Av f/5.6
ISO 100
Eval metering
EF-S 18-55
RAW