A blurry reel can be frustrating, but the good news is there are several ways you can try to fix it and sharpen your footage. The most common causes of blurry reels are shaky camera work, improper focus, low light conditions, and compression artifacts from uploading. Addressing these issues can help make your reels look crisp and professional.
Use a Tripod or Gimbal
One of the biggest culprits behind blurry footage is shaky hands. When you film handheld, any natural movements as you hold the camera can translate into blurriness in the final clip. Using a tripod or gimbal stabilizer helps lock the camera in place and eliminate shakes and jitters.
Tripods range from inexpensive mini tripods you can set on any flat surface to professional models with fluid heads for smooth panning. Gimbals use motors and sensors to actively stabilize your smartphone or camera during filming. This allows you to shoot steady footage even when moving around.
While tripods keep the camera completely static, gimbals let you move while maintaining stability. Choose the option that best fits your filming style and setup.
Manual Focus
Autofocus on phones and cameras can sometimes unintentionally drift, causing your subject to go in and out of focus during a clip. This leads to that jarring blurry effect. Instead, switch to manual focus mode so you can lock the focus point yourself.
Identify your subject and use the manual focus ring on your camera lens or the focus icon in your smartphone camera app to lock focus at that set distance. This way if you or the subject move slightly during filming, the focus should remain constant.
Adjust Aperture for Wider Depth of Field
Shallow depth of field can also cause blurriness, where only part of your frame is in sharp focus. This happens when using wide apertures like f/1.8 or f/2.8. Wider apertures dramatically reduce depth of field so your subject has to stay exactly at that focused distance or they will blur.
Closing down your aperture to f/5.6 or f/8 will widen the depth of field so more of the scene stays reasonably sharp. This gives you more leeway if you or the subject shift during the shot.
Add Lighting
When filming in low light conditions, the camera sensor has to boost ISO levels in order to brighten up the scene. But higher ISOs introduce noise, graininess, and artifacts that can reduce sharpness and clarity. The solution is adding more light.
Use portable LED light panels to illuminate your subject and space. Look for models with high color accuracy and CRI ratings for natural looking light. Proper lighting gives the camera sensor enough brightness to use lower ISO levels, resulting in crisp, clean footage.
Avoid Digital Zooming
It’s tempting to use the digital zoom built into your smartphone camera to get a closer view of your subject. But digitally zooming simply crops into the existing image, reducing resolution and introducing pixelation. This magnifies any blurriness from hand shakes or focus issues.
Instead, move physically closer to your subject when possible. Or look into attaching a true optical zoom lens to your smartphone for smooth, sharper zoomed footage.
Use a Lens Protector
Blurriness could also be the result of a dirty or smudged camera lens. Oils, dust, and fingerprints on the glass can diffusion and soften your footage. Always keep lens wipes handy and clean your lens before filming.
To avoid future smudges, use a lens protector. These cheap transparent covers shield the actual glass underneath from dirt and debris. Just be sure to stick to reputable brands so image quality isn’t degraded.
Adjust Compression Settings
Heavy video compression when exporting your clips can introduce artifacts and noise that steal sharpness. This is especially true when uploading to Instagram or other social platforms.
Try exporting your master files at the highest possible bitrate and resolution. Then for your final upload, choose the least aggressive compression settings allowed that still meets the file size limits.
You can also run your exported file through a video optimizer like Handbrake before uploading. This helps retain maximum quality under strict compression parameters.
Add Sharpening Filters
If your source footage is slightly soft, you can apply sharpening filters and effects to artificially boost perceived sharpness. Most video editing apps like Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, iMovie etc. come equipped with built-in sharpening filters.
Be careful not to overdo it, as excessive sharpening can look unnatural. But a light amount can help compensate for focus or compression issues.
You can also touch up your subject in photo editing apps to reduce motion blur and increase local contrast around edges. Use layer masks to apply these adjustments selectively.
Shoot in ProRes or ProRes RAW
ProRes and ProRes RAW are high-quality Apple codecs that help preserve more detail compared to compressed formats like h.264. If you have an iPhone that supports it, shooting natively in one of these ProRes formats can give you cleaner footage with less artifacts.
Having the pristine ProRes master as your source will make blemishes and blurriness less obvious when you apply compression later on export. The extra data in ProRes provides more room for sharpening adjustments as well.
Get Closer to Subject
Blur is more visible and pronounced on distant objects, since the details get smaller in frame. When possible, move your camera closer to the subject so they fill more of the composition.
Not only will close-ups hide blurriness better, but they give you more pixels on your subject to work with. This allows cropping to reframe and hide anyproblem spots, as well as gives you flexibility to magnify and sharpen in post if needed.
Use Lens Profile Correction
Most camera lenses exhibit some natural optical imperfections like chromatic aberration, distortion, and vignetting around the edges. This can contribute to reduced sharpness away from the center of the frame.
Lens correction tools in apps like Lightroom and Camera Raw automatically fix these lens flaws based on lens model profiles. This cleans up any blurriness so the entire frame is uniformly sharp edge-to-edge.
Handheld? Use a Faster Shutter Speed
If you need to shoot handheld, using a faster shutter speed can minimize motion blur from camera shake. Aim for shutter speeds at least double your frame rate – so 1/120s minimum for standard 24/30fps footage. Faster is even better.
Wider apertures and higher ISO levels will allow you to increase shutter speed. Or add artificial lighting to properly expose at fast shutters. This essentially freezes the action to avoid blur.
Upgrade Camera Hardware
Despite your best efforts, the phone or camera you’re using may simply not be capable of capturing very sharp, high-quality footage, especially in low light conditions.
Upgrading to a camera with a larger high-resolution sensor, superior image processing, and sharp lens will give you cleaner, sharper clips straight out of camera. This makes correcting blur in post production much easier.
Of course this is one of the more expensive routes, but may be necessary if your current hardware is very outdated and incapable of resolving enough detail.
Re-Record the Footage
Sometimes blurriness is simply unavoidable due to environmental conditions, subject movement, or other challenges while filming. In these cases, you might need to just scrap the clip and re-record it under better conditions.
Set up proper lighting, stabilize the camera, lock focus, and ensure your subject remains within focus. Then record the shot again being mindful to avoid previous issues. Additional takes until you nail the shot can save you from dealing with irreconcilable blurry footage in post.
Pay attention to preventing blurriness while filming, and your footage will require fewer corrections later. But if your reels still turn out fuzzy, try the tips above to sharpen them back up before sharing.