I have NO clue what the deal is with my siggy, it's been like for a couple days now......It's weird because there's no reason it would be censored, it's just dates and my ticker......
Sorry to hear that... Don't get discouraged. It takes time and practice to use a DSLR if you're not used to it and/or don't have a good understanding of exposure or know what settings to use. Trust me on this. I have had some really bad photos, I mean really bad, and in the beginning I didn't know why. If you post a photo up, we could take a look at the Exif info and possibly be able to help you figure out what went wrong. You could post it on the photo boards if you don't want to post it here.
Thank you very much. I too am usually the passenger while driving with my DD9 where I am the pedal pusher. On this day she wanted to ride with DW so I had a car to myself. Trying to drive while taking pictures is not a good idea even when it is an autopia car. Kind of like texting and driving. I was trying to drive, look for shots while stealing glances behind me to see if I had enough room to stop and get a shot. Next time I will stick being the passenger.
Stitch, when I first saw your Exif info I thought 1/500 is plenty fast and it should have come out in focus. But, then I looked further and your camera was in Manual focus mode. If you didn't know it was in manual focus mode, that would probably be why the photo is blurred. I've done the same in years past. It's frustrating, but that's how we learn. On my D90 and D80 there is a focus switch. Im not sure if you have a switch or a button on the D40, but anyway, if that switch is set to M then I have to manually focus my lenses. If it's set to A that means the body will autofocus my lens for me.
My Exif reader software says that your exposure setting was undefined, so I don't know what exposure setting you had it set to, but if the camera switch was set to M, that's probably why the photo is blurred. Switching it to M overrides any other setting. So you could have had it in Auto mode, but with the manual focus switch set to M, it told the camera that you will manually focus the lens. You probably thought it was in Autofocus mode (AFA, AFS or AFC) and didn't know that the camera wouldn't Autofocus. In Manual focus mode, the camera will snap a photo of anything whether in focus or not. It's depending on you to tell it what to do. In AF mode, if the camera could not find focus, it would 'hunt' for it and the lens sometimes will zoom in and out, in and out to try to find focus. (Like in a dark ride setting for example.)
I hope this helps you some. Let me know if you have any questions. I'm no expert, but I'll do the best I can to pass along what I know...Hopefully someone else with more experience will chime in here...