Noob in need of help

[HDNitehawk]

@Kickasskev
Welcome to the forums and welcome to the DSLR world.

What I see you are doing wrong is this "I usually have my camera set". There is no setting that would be "right" in every situation. Getting a good sharp properly exposed pictures is a juggling act of choosing the right aperture, shutter speed and ISO. The three always add up to give you the exposure of your picture, one has to go up for one to go down. To get a faster shutter speed you have to have a wider aperture setting or a higher ISO.

If ISO is to high it can affect your IQ. It is seen in your picture as noise at the higher ISO's. In general I try to keep my ISO below 800 unless I just have to go higher.

Aperture can affect your sharpness and IQ. Many lenses if they are wide open will not produce the best picture. At 5.6 you should be good with your lens, stay between 5.6 to 11 and for many lenses you would be ok. Wide open it can affect your IQ and if you get to high it can do the same. At F/13 with some lenses it will start being noticeable when you are pixel peeping. Also aperture controls your depth of field. The depth of field is the amount of area that is in focus, the narrower the aperture the deeper the depth of field is. Wider lenses have a deeper depth of field than longer lenses do at the same aperture. If you are pixel peeping and do not fully understand this affect, you could miss interpret it as the picture not being sharp.

Shutter Speed is probably your culprit. One issue is camera shake, the lower the shutter speed the harder it is to take a sharp picture because of your hand movement. The faster the speed it is easier. Also moving objects require faster shutter speeds, this is true with and movement whether it is from the wind, walking, running or whatever.

Others talked about technique, and it is important as well. Shutter Speed can help overcome shaky hand holding, but because of lighting conditions much of the time it is hard to rely on the crutch.

Overall there is a reason you select an aperture setting, you either want much of your photo in focus or you are trying to get a certain amount of bokeh in the background. You should be trying to keep your ISO reasonable so as to not get noise. You should be picking a shutter speed fast enough to either stop your action, or slow enough to blur your action depending on what you want. Most of the time you have decide what you will settle with on each one to get a properly exposed picture.