Wedding photographers must have a steady hand!

    One essential aspect of great wedding photos, is sharpness.  A great photo almost always have one area of the photo that is tack sharp.  Sharpness is something that takes a lot of work to master.  There are a few things you can do to ensure a sharp photo.

1. Keep your shutter speed no slower that 1/(your focal length).  This rule can be broken when you have a tripod, use a flash, or have image stabilization on the lens.
2. Learn to use your auto focus points to ensure you have the desired area in focus.  
3. Use quality lenses.
4. Use walls, tables, chairs or anything you can find to support yourself.
5. Take a deep breath and release the shutter right before you exhale.
6. In low light use a flash or tripod to ensure sharp images.
7. For freezing motion, use faster shutter speeds, flash and focus on where your subject is going to be.
8. Learn to manual focus, there are times when manual focusing is the only way to get the shot.

This picture was taken at a wedding I shot at the Courtyard Restaurant here in Ottawa, last fall.  The sharpness of this photo is what gives the shot character.  You can see every detail in the subject.  For this shot I put my ISO up a bit to 400 and used a slower shutter around 1/30.  The aperture was set at 2.8 to blur the background.  I had to use a wider focal length to allow me to use such a slow shutter hand held.  To freeze any camera shake I bounced a flash off the ceiling at around 1/4 power.

To all you photographers out there make sure you pay close attention to image sharpness.
To all you shopping around for wedding photographers make sure you look for a photographer who produces consistently sharp images.