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I am using a Nikon D3100 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6G.
I am currently taking class photos for the school magazine and I am curious about the best setting possible. It is all indoors with fluorescent lightings and of course natural.
I reviewed the photo that I have taken so far, but the 3rd row of students are always blurred. The first row is the most clearest but the third row is blur. Is there any way to fix this? Is there any settings to make every row clear or is it just like that?
The number one thing you need to do here is bring your own light. The institutional-quality fluorescents have a number of strikes against them:
If you are shooting for an image that will end up in a relatively small print or in an online magazine, don't worry at all about raising the ISO to a level where you can get both a fast shutter speed (¹⁄₁₀₀th or faster) and stop down to f/8 or f/11 for depth of field — that is, more in focus from back to front.
And, if you have three rows, try focusing on the middle row rather than the front. As a rule of thumb, the area of acceptable focus is spread out about ¹⁄₃ in front and ²⁄₃ behind the point where you focused, so if you focus just on the front row, you're wasting some of that on the area in front of those people where there's nothing.
As Michael notes in the comments, if you are going for black and white results, the color rendition and spectrum problems are less of a problem. But, in any case, you'll still need to worry about the overall dimness.
If your school has a little bit of budget, an interesting choice might be the Godox V850, which is a relatively powerful manual flash with radio control which you can set from the camera, and which will work with any camera with a hotshoe. Combine this, or a pair of them, with some big umbrellas and budget flash stands, and you can control your own destiny (both making for better photos, and making a better educational experience — hopefully with the two of those combined, you can convince the school to spend a bit.) You can get this flash from eBay, or the identical thing branded as "Neewer TT850" from Amazon, or for a higher price but with better customer service and one-day repair turnaround from Cheetah Lighting. (Or some other model of budget flash will do; this just happens to have the radio trigger at a nice price; of course, specific models and technology will change quickly, so this is just an example of something that might be useful.)
The blur you are getting is natural and is a result of the depth of field of the camera. In order to increase the depth of field, you can move further away from the subject, use a wider focal length and/or use a smaller (larger number) aperture.
Aperture is the measure of how large of an opening the light gets focused through and the bigger the f/ number, the smaller the aperture opening is. Smaller aperture is the easiest way to get more depth of field, but it also means less light gets in to the camera, so you'll need more light or a slower shutter speed (or higher ISO) to take the same photo.
From my point of view:
you are getting the blur because you using a higher aperture,
1) keep it between f/5 - f/10 increase the ISO to 400 - 800
2) reduce the shutter speed to 1/60 to 1/100 depending upon the lighting
3) use a tripod first click a photo when the class is empty and check for the lighting if it is coming proper and all focus points are okay
4) also keep the focus matrix 3D if you want to capture multiple people at the same time.
If you are doing all four things properly you will get a nice photo with proper lighting and good focus.
Instead of focusing on the front row, focus on the middle row. When you focus on the front row a large portion of your depth of field is wasted on the air in front of the first row. If that doesn't work then increase the f-number (smaller aperture). If that causes the shutter speed to be too slow then increase ISO or add light.
To get the whole scene in focus, you need to use a small aperture. The higher the f-stop number, the smaller the aperture. This will make the exposure time get longer. Use a tripod. It would be ideal to use studio lighting.
depth of field, have a look at here and here – Pouya Feb 21 '14 at 8:58