I was at a youth rodeo last night and once it got dark and the arena lights came on my pictures started coming out blurry.
Hi Jennifer, sounds like you've got blur from two sources: camera movement (shake) and subject movement. I'd like to add that the faster the subject is moving (you mentioned it was a rodeo), the more blur you will notice unless you can increase your shutterspeed sufficiently. The cunundrum here is that, while you'll need to increase your shutterspeed to reduce blur from subject movement, the light reaching your CCD/CMOS will also be reduced resulting in underexposed images. As Mike mentioned, increasing the diameter of your aperture will help offset this to some degree. You can also increase the ISO value making your camera more light sensitive. Doing this, however, will add "noise" to your image but that might be the lesser of two evils if you really want to capture that special action shot. I'd also suggest trying to get closer to your subject if you can. Can you get to the railing and just shoot the action when it's on your side of the arena?
