Pictures not as clear as I expect.

I am using a T2i, and the EFS 55-250, and most the pictures are just hazy, and blurry and not that great of quality. I know what I am doing I feel well enough to adjust the iso and shutter speed settings. I just see so many beautiful pictures on here, is it because I have a cheap lens and camera? Or is it my error?

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Be really helpful if you can post some examples with EXIF information intact. My guess is that you're not achieving adequate shutter speed and are getting motion blur but can't tell without pics. It's a decent lens but slow so need to increase ISO or have lots of light.

Let me see what I can find, its just the last few days taking birding photos, I liked I think 3 out of 400. Is that normal?

please post a couple samples

some pictures posted in original post

I don't think they look that bad. The baseball pics look to be focused correctly. They might benefit from just a tad of PP sharpening. The bird pics are just too far away but the bunny pic looks pretty good. Maybe I'm missing something.

Not very helpful here but I think they look pretty darn good, especially the baseball shots.

NothingRemains10 wrote in post #9922771
some pictures posted in original post

Odd, the first time I was here, they weren't there

Anyway, they look great to me except for the squirrel one. That's front focused.

None of those have any processing. Just cropping. Those are some of the better ones. I guess those aren't good examples though. Let me find a few crap ones. Maybe most of my unhappiness is from the lens not having enough reach. But it seems I have a ton of focus issues mainly. Probably around 60%. Like the picture will look great, but be blurry, so therefor useless.

Would going to strictly manual focus help? That is what I did for the baseball shots..I have it on AI Servo mode also.

I'm having a hard time getting the Exif to show right with my viewer, were you really shooting at around 200mm on all of those shots? Were any of these shot on a tripod? or are they all hand-held?

Mostly they don't too bad to me...the squirrel looks a little soft to me. I haven't used this lens before so I'm not sure how much can be expected out of it.

Most of them were full zoom. All hand held. I own a tripod, but im not sure if my camera works on it. I bought it for my video camera actually.

Snydremark wrote in post #9922838
...Were any of these shot on a tripod? or are they all hand-held?..

They were all at 1/400 or higher. Tripods not going to help much.

NothingRemains10 wrote in post #9922821
None of those have any processing. ...

I just ran a high pass filter on one of the baseball pics to sharpen it a little and it looks much crisper. Focus looks great.

Those pictures look great to me. It might be a different story at 100% magnification, but there's nothing wrong with what you posted. Sharpen as desired.

NothingRemains10 wrote in post #9922821
... Let me find a few crap ones. Maybe most of my unhappiness is from the lens not having enough reach.....

An example of a pic you are not happy with would probably be better.

And it sounds as if you have fallen into the tele-trap. First you start with the 55-250, but that just doesn't get you high after a bit so you sell it, toss in a few more bucks and for for the 70-300. 50mm extra reach satiates your craving for a bit but it too is not enough after a while. So you pick up the 1.4 t-con but it too satisfies for a little while so you just to the 100-400 or the 150-500.

Before you know it your selling your kids to pick up the 800mm and wondering if you can trade the wife for the holy grail of tele-lenses, the 120mm.

Yup.. you got it bad.