9/28    A lot of photos I take come out blurry. A lot of them are clear,
        too, but the proportion of blurry photos is high. This has led me
        to take more photos than I otherwise would in hopes of getting a
        clear one. I took some photos of the Rio grande and they
        were all awesome, but the next day I took photos of landscapes
        and almost all of them were blurry. Could it be the camera or is
        it likely operator error? The most routine photos can come out
        blurry. Seems like I should not need a tripod for most of the
        things I shoot (like fountains and architecture.)
        \- Was the blur due to camera shake or moving subject [river,
           foutain]? For camera shake, one rule of thumb is shutter = 1/zoom,
           so you can hold at 1/60th for a 50mm shot, but even 1/125th is
           inadequate at 300mm. Well/evenly lit landscape typically are
           pretty forgiving from the technical perspective ... subject not
           moving and plenty of light and essentially no DoF constraints
           means you have a lot of shutter/aperture options. In addition
           to the shutter lag issue with PS cameras, they are often super
           light and thus hard t hold steady. Even a little stabilization
           can make the difference ... without going to tripid ... sit down
           and put camera on your knee, put your elbows on a table, lean
           against a building/wall/tree etc.
           Here is my guess what is going on: the camera is seeing a fair
           amount of light, so opts to shoot at its slowest ISO and is
           picking a pretty wide aperture ... and because the camera is so
           light, it's hard to hold steadyat what would be easy to hold on
           a heavier camera with better image stabilization (does your PS
           have IS?). With my G10 I can clearly hold to 1/40. Below that,
           say 1/25, it depends on if you are cropping etc. You'll have to
           get to know your gear to make the blur/iso noise tradeoff.
        \_ What shutter speeds are you using?  Unless you have very steady
           hands, make sure you're shooting at 1/125th of a second or faster.
           Also, are you moving the camera away before it's finished taking
           the picture?  I've used one cheap camera that displayed a preview
           of the shot right after you pressed the trigger, but didn't take
           the actual picture until a second or so later.  It looked like it
           was done once it displayed the preview, but if you started putting
           the camera down at that point, the actual shot would be blurred.
           Finally, are you sure your pictures are in focus?  If you post a
           sample picture, we can try to narrow down what's going wrong.
           \_ Good comments, thanks.
        \_ What kind of camera are you talking about?  SLR?  Point-and-shoot?
           Cell phone camera?
           \_ Point-and-shoot