Saguaro Lake to Four Peaks

Sexy6Chick

Went wheeling Saturday evening with a friend of ours. Decided to take the D40 and get some practice on it. Just some shots from the evening.

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8

9

10

11

12(My fiance snapped this shot)

13

14

anwmn1

Hey Natalie what were the settings on these shots? EXIF?

There seems to be a lot of noise in the sky and some of the focus seems to be soft.

Sexy6Chick

The only settings I changed were the shutter speed and the f-stop, f-stop primarily. I noticed how a few of the shots came out fuzzy towards the left of the picture. I didn't understand how part of it could be in focus and part of it out because with the D40 it's a manual focus. Of course i'm sure there is some setting I have no idea about that can do that.

Photoshop is killing the clarity/quality of the pictures, they look so much better on my PC. It's time for me to either upgrade to a Flickr account or pony up for a smugmug account.

Looks like image setting was set to JPEG Fine, should I change it to RAW?

leaforte

Looks as if you all had an awesome day of 4X'ing!

anwmn1

Sexy6Chick wrote:

The only settings I changed were the shutter speed and the f-stop, f-stop primarily. I noticed how a few of the shots came out fuzzy towards the left of the picture. I didn't understand how part of it could be in focus and part of it out because with the D40 it's a manual focus. Of course i'm sure there is some setting I have no idea about that can do that.

Photoshop is killing the clarity/quality of the pictures, they look so much better on my PC. It's time for me to either upgrade to a Flickr account or pony up for a smugmug account.

Looks like image setting was set to JPEG Fine, should I change it to RAW?

No need to go to RAW until you understand shooting full manual and have some post process knowledge. Otherwise you might just overwhelm yourself and be even more upset seeing the LCD compared to what you get on your computer.

Check the camera manual for noise reduction. Anytime you are shooting at ISO 400 or faster or shooting an exposure of more than 1/3 second I would make sure you have the noise reduction turned on.

I do not know that camera at all but there are hundreds of people on here that do. Check the manual first and you can always Google too. After that you can post questions in different areas and people will give you some useful advice. Ziggy who posts a lot in the Camera and Accessories sections at the top is an encyclopedia of sorts with the different cameras.

Sexy6Chick

anwmn1 wrote:

No need to go to RAW until you understand shooting full manual and have some post process knowledge. Otherwise you might just overwhelm yourself and be even more upset seeing the LCD compared to what you get on your computer.

Check the camera manual for noise reduction. Anytime you are shooting at ISO 400 or faster or shooting an exposure of more than 1/3 second I would make sure you have the noise reduction turned on.

I do not know that camera at all but there are hundreds of people on here that do. Check the manual first and you can always Google too. After that you can post questions in different areas and people will give you some useful advice. Ziggy who posts a lot in the Camera and Accessories sections at the top is an encyclopedia of sorts with the different cameras.

Noise reduction is on, ISO is at 400. I will definitely take a look at the manual. Need to do some reading before using this camera more. I'll stick to my Olympus until I read up on it and really understand it some more. Thanks for the tips Aaron, always appreciate your help.

AFBlue

Sexy6Chick, in addition to lots of noise, there is a lot of dirt in there(not too surprising given what you were doing). Images 1, 2, 3, 4, and 8 show some large spots on the right side (and all in the same places) and #11 is the most spotted of them all. More frequent lens clearing (I know, not easy to remember when you're having 4-wheeling fun) or cleaning in post-processing would help.
As to the focus question and noise problem, I don't know the ins-and-outs of a D40, but I know about crud on lenses.
Some nice shots otherwise. Hope you had as much fun as it looks like.

kdog

Sexy6Chick wrote:

Noise reduction is on, ISO is at 400.

Actually you should have been using a lower ISO for those shots. Lower ISOs have lower noise. I see from your EXIF data that most of those shots were in the 1/4000s range. You could have used ISO100, and still have had a shutterspeed of 1/1000.

The other thing that's puzzling in your EXIF on at least one shot is that it says EC -4. If that's true, the shot would have been extremely underexposed. If you had increased the exposure in PS, that would also have greatly increased noise. Best to keep your EC at 0 for most cases.

Looks like a great trip.

-joel

Sexy6Chick

kdog wrote:

Actually you should have been using a lower ISO for those shots. Lower ISOs have lower noise. I see from your EXIF data that most of those shots were in the 1/4000s range. You could have used ISO100, and still have had a shutterspeed of 1/1000.

The other thing that's puzzling in your EXIF on at least one shot is that it says EC -4. If that's true, the shot would have been extremely underexposed. If you had increased the exposure in PS, that would also have greatly increased noise. Best to keep your EC at 0 for most cases.

Looks like a great trip.

-joel

Yea I just went in and looked at those settings on the camera after Aaron asked about them. I have never touched the ISO. It was on 400 from the previous owner (I just picked this up from a fellow off-roading enthusiast a few months ago). I have been doing exposure work in PS. I will pay closer attention to my shuterspeed, I was focusing more on the f-stop number and seeing how it changed the lighting in the images. Definitely need to pick up some lens cleaner.

Thanks for all the info, I have a lot to learn haha.

Dionysus

Sexy6Chick wrote:

Yea I just went in and looked at those settings on the camera after Aaron asked about them. I have never touched the ISO. It was on 400 from the previous owner (I just picked this up from a fellow off-roading enthusiast a few months ago). I have been doing exposure work in PS. I will pay closer attention to my shuterspeed, I was focusing more on the f-stop number and seeing how it changed the lighting in the images. Definitely need to pick up some lens cleaner.

Thanks for all the info, I have a lot to learn haha.

most of the pictures also look really underexposed. was the exposure compensation set in the negatives?