Why do my pictures look bad on my laptop screen but they look great on my cameras display?

So I got a Nikon D3100 with a 55-300MM lens. When I take a picture, it looks amazing on the display. But when I go to import them on my laptop, they don't look as good as they look on the display. I don't know why and I'm hoping that there's a fix because it really makes me feel down when taking photos knowing that they won't look good on the laptop. If there's any information that you want/need to know like camera settings that could affect this, I would be happy to reply

Your camera display and your computer monitor have different resolutions.

The photos you take look better because there's less resolution on your camera screen. The pixels in the photo's display are closer together and will look sharper than on your computer screen, where the pixels of the image are farther apart.

To fix that, you need to take photos at a higher resolution. That way, the pixel pattern of the image will be tighter and will look crisper and sharper to your eye.

The LCD on the back of your camera has too low of a resolution AND it's far, far too small to see any details. So when you look at the photo on a monitor, you are able to see all of the defects of the lens and any technical mistakes you may have made such as missing the focus or not getting the exposure right.

This explains why so many people think that their smartphones take good pictures. If all they do is look at the shots on their phones screen, they'll never actually see any of the imperfections.

Now as far as fixing this problem, that's not so easy because the image can look bad for a lot of different reasons. If you post the images and explain what bothers you about it, then someone can give you specific instructions on how to avoid the problem.

Most of the time the problem is either too much noise or blurry pictures. Too much noise is caused by either using too high of an ISO, or underexposing the shot and then trying to fix it in post production. Blur can be one of two things: either you moved the camera during the exposure which is called camera shake, or the subject moved which is called motion blur.

To avoid camera shake, you need to start off with a shutter speed that is about 1.5x greater than the focal length used. So if you use a 50mm lens, your shutter speed should be about 1/80th to avoid camera shake. This rule of thumb was invented decades ago during the age of film where you'd want to have the shutter speed be equal to 1/focal length. So with a 50mm lens, you'd want to shoot no slower than about 1/50th (1/60th being the closest choice). Since you have an APS-C format camera which has a crop factor of 1.5x (Nikon or Pentax) or 1.6x (Canon), you have to take into account that the "equivalent" focal length.

Post some shots, or better yet, post a link to your instagram or flickr page and you'll get more accurate suggestions.

Without seeing a sample of the "bad" images, we can't tell whether your problem has to do with camera movement (causing blur) or an auto-focus issue.

If you have been studying the fundamentals of photography, lighting, and composition, you will have discovered that shooting in RAW gives you the most image data and using ISO settings of 400 or less will reduce the apparent noise caused when too much gain is applied to the analogue to digital converter (high ISO)

The way your pictures look on the laptop screen is how your pictures really look. The camera's screen is too small it tends to hide gross errors. How to fix this problem? Learn photography.

Screen size and resolution are the probable reasons but it also makes a difference if you're shooting RAW - the images need post processing to bring out the colours but the image you see in the camera is a JPEG preview so it's already been enhanced.

No need repeating the same answer, but one thing has not been mentioned. You should be able to enlarge the photo on the back of your camera to 100%. You can then scroll around the monitor and see the details of your photo as it Really looks. You Can't judge your photos by the extremely compressed view you get on the monitor of the entire image. Learn how to view the photo at 100% on your camera monitor.

As for what will "fix" the problem, the only fix is for you to learn how to take photos correctly in the first place.