Do your often shoot images that are soft and blurry, but don’t know why? If so you have a serious problem that needs to be resolved—whether the issue is faulty equipment, improper camera settings, or poor technique. The good news is that today’s tutorial will set you straight and help you capture sharp photos every time.

Instructor Simon d’Entremont is a Canadian pro specializing in wildlife, landscape, and nature photography. In barely 11 minutes he’ll help diagnose your problem and provide several effective solutions so you can concentrate on getting other things right.

Simon breaks down the most common sources of soft photos into five distinct categories: The subject moved while the shutter was open, the camera moved, depth of field is too narrow, you simply missed focus, or your images are noisy and of poor quality. We’ll leave malfunctioning cameras and lenses for another day.

If your subject moved during the exposure “it will streak across the sensor pixels rather than staying in one place” and the camera will record that movement rather than freezing your subject in a moment of time. Simon explains how to identify this as the problem, as compared to other possibilities, in this way: “If your subject is blurry but the rest of the image in the same plane of focus is sharp, then subject movement is the problem.”

You have two primary solutions when this occurs. One is increasing the shutter speed and he offers this guideline: 1/100 for static targets, 1/500 for slow-moving subjects, 1/1,000 for sports or other fast targets, and 1/2,000 for shooting birds in flight.

The second solution is to improve your panning skills, and this is a very valuable technique for nailing focus on a moving subject while blurring the background. This makes a subject really stand out. But as you’ll see, this approach requires modifying exposure, selecting the appropriate image-stabilization mode on lenses with this option, and practicing your panning technique.

Likewise, camera movement can dramatically cause softness in similar ways. Simon discusses the ramifications of this issue and provides workable solutions as he did when discussing subject movement. As Simon explains, “the tell here is blurriness across the entire scene.”  In this case he provides three potential solutions.

The remainder of the video is devoted to the final two considerations, where you’ll how to identify if insufficient depth of field is holding you back, or whether your image quality is so poor and noisy that it’s impossible to get the job done—unless you carefully follow the fixes he provides.

There much more to see and learn by visiting Simon’s popular YouTube channel, so do that as soon as you can.

We also recommend watching the tutorial we posted from another pro who explains how to make the subject of a photo really stand out when shooting outside on a gloomy days.

It’s not often that you can learn five powerful pro tips for two genres of photography in barely four minutes, but that’s exactly what you’ll find in this tutorial from our friends at the B&H Photo Video instructional YouTube channel.

Instructor John Weatherby is a Florida-based photographer who discovered a love of the camera while working as waiter in college. He narrowed his interests to landscape, travel, and street photography, developed his skills, and gradually acquired better gear. Now, years later, he’s pursuing his passion as a pro while frequently sharing the secrets to his success

In this behind-the-scenes episode you’ll follow Weatherby wandering Brooklyn as he reveals “five tips for next-level cityscapes.” He’s quick to point out that everything you learn today is equally valuable for shooting landscapes in the field. In rapid-fire fashion Weatherby covers everything from camera settings, exposure tips, focusing and composition. He even throws in a powerful editing tip at the end.

Weatherby, like most accomplished landscape shooters, considers composition of utmost importance and that’s where he begins—noting that poorly composed images “can’t be fixed in post.” Rather than repeating all the so-called “rules” you’ve heard before, he illustrates the methods that make his images so captivating. He thoughtfully captions his images with gear information and key settings—and there’s a complete list of the equipment he prefers in the description beneath the video.

Next is a quick discussion of camera modes, during which Weatherby explains why he recommends shooting in Aperture Priority—despite claims by some purists that Manual mode is the only way to go. His approach is to keep ISO  as low as possible and select an aperture of f/8 or f/11 to ensure good depth of field. Then he leaves it up to the camera to determine the appropriate shutter speed.

Another thing Weatherby has in common with many landscape/cityscape pros is the frequent use of lens filters. He describes the value of employing ND filters to invoke a sense of motion, like with water scenes or when there are clouds moving across the sky. You’ll also see why Weatherby always has an L-Bracket in his bag.

The last tip is a demonstration of how to shoot and create a Time Blend, which he describes as “one of my favorite techniques.” This involves mounting the camera stop a tripod, shooting multiple images of the same scene over an extended period of time, and merging the images during post processing. This technique requires a bit of extra work, but the results can be sensational.

Weatherby’s instructional YouTube channel is a great source of information and inspiration, so be sure to pay a visit.

And don’t miss the tutorial we posted earlier with another successful pro who explains the important first steps to take after getting a new camera before you go out to shoot.