My photos appear to be .... not as sharp as I expect them to be.

[misstwinklytoes]

I agree about getting closer to what you are photographing *focusing* on. I think it's not so much that the pictures are not sharp (they are a little soft, but not horrible) as much as it is that your eye doesn't know what to go to in the photo.

 

[hartz]

@Everybody: Wow, thank you!

@ababysean: yes, straight out of the camera.

@NateWagner ... I do apologize for the dumb mistake! Ha ha ... <me laughing nervously at myself>


@sabscuck:
1. Yes
2. Yes and I appreciate this - you get what you pay for
3. I discovered where to set this once I explored the settings a bit AFTER taking these pictures. The camera has got 4 AF modes and I suspect that rather than fidgeting with menus to switch between them for every shot based on the scene, I will just leave it set to centrepoint; meter, compose, shoot. I hate the "unknown" aspect added by not realy knowing what the camera thinks it is doing when being "clever".
4. Noted.
5. Thanx, I think. (Checked Google for meaning of SOOC)

@o_hey_tyler:
I appreciate the throught but I hope not. The slowest photo taken were at 1/20. Granted my recently retired S5500 were only a 4 megapixel camera, but those pixels were packed more closely - smaller sensor. I'm not sure whether those things realy cancel each other out but I should expect so. Regardless I could take good enough pictures at 1/20 with my old camera, and that is not yet considering the "Vibration Reduction" (VR) of the new Nikkor lens... which I read should "allow me an extra 2 to 3 stops" ... Do I understand this correctly?

@LuckySe7en:
The smaller depth of field is something I knew about as a result of the larger sensor format, having read about it, but the effect is much more pronounced than I expected it to be! Blurring the background was in fact intentional only in the food picture. The sharpest point in that photo is the mint leave and I realy would have preferred the whole dish to be at least as sharp as the mint leave.

@Vinny: I more and more realize the truth in this, much as I wish it weren't so.

@clanthar: The focal length is not particularly long, I would expect to be able to hand-hold and shoot at these sort of zooms without problems, based on my past experience. I am used to the rule of thumb stating that your shutter-speed should be the inverse of your focal length or faster ... It works for me.

I do think that a large part of my problem is knowing which spot exactly is in focus. As I've said previously, at least for now, I am going to select centre-point and use that until I get to grips with focussing much better. That way at least I'll be able to tell afterwards whether the spot I wanted to focus on is the best focussed spot or not.

I must say the color-corrections you did on the photo is very nicely done. I've noticed that the camera has got Picture modes which are basically a collection of "presets" for saturation, contrast, etc. I gather it is important that I learn how to use these quickly.

I looked at the corrected cactus picture you posted and while it looks nice enough, at 100% zoom the thorns don't look sharp, they might as well be soft wool strings. This is what is bothering me!

@DanFinePhotography: Yes and No. Firstly 55mm is the maximum zoom on this lens. But regardless, I wanted the situation included - those baboons are walking arround in a builtup, residential area. In other words while I want the baboons to be much sharper and clearer in the photo, they are not the sole focus of the photo. It is essentially a holday-snap, not a "family of baboons" photo taken for a magazine. But I get your point and if I had a larger zoom I would have taken a few closer cropped photos as extras. I was NOT about to go any closer to the baboons. Baboons are wild animals, and are very dangerous animals.

All in all I think I need to concentrate on getting in camera settings, such as sharpness and contrast, under control. I also need to, for the moment at least, try to shoot at faster speeds and take control of what the AF system focusses on (Centre-point)

Hopefully I can post again in a few days and gets some agreement that I managed to improve my mastery of this tool (hint-hint)

Cheers,
_hartz