For just one example, in DSC_0100 I see sideways camera shake. ![enter image description here][1] And since this one is in portrait orientation it makes me suspect that the sideways camera shake came from your finger pressing the shutter release button. Do not *"push"* the shutter release button, instead *squeeze* it. Just like you would squeeze to dry a wet sponge with your whole hand, or, at least between the button finger and palm of your hand, forget the other fingers. Focusing is another thing that you must re-learn after using a compact camera. Locking exposure and focus by pressing the shutter release button half-way and holding it there is a nice feature, but you are not supposed to do any great changes in composition or even move the camera too much. See the picture (below) how just _turning_ your camera can cause focus miss. ![enter image description here][2] It is a bit extreme in that drawing. Normally with the aperture range of a kit lens you won't lose focus quite so quickly. Still you should respect the shallowness of the area in focus, which is affecting this photo: ![enter image description here][3] The bench armrest and the little girl are in focus, but the depth of focused area is rather shallow with system cameras. You can improve this by using smaller aperture (here in the photo it was f/5.3) to make the out-of-focus areas appear a bit "sharper". One more problem in self-evaluating your photos is the down-sizing to fit screen. For example the DSC_0209 photo (family in front of a brick wall) the photo is sharp at 100% pixels size (zoomed in on your screen), but as it is 6000 pixels tall it must be downsized on-the-fly to fit the full photo on your screen. There it matters a lot which kind of resize algorithm is used by the viewer software. You will get better results with the downsize tools found in a proper photo editing software. For more about this, read the answers to ["How can one determine the ideal resampling algorithm for a given type of image?"][4] [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/BUkQX.jpg [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/sQLmH.jpg [3]: https://i.sstatic.net/hd8lQ.jpg [4]: http://photo.stackexchange.com/q/11095/17441