why do my plane shots keep getting rejected with "grainy, soft"?

biggerben · Dec 2, 2009

What am I doing wrong? Every time I upload a plane shot taken in good weather it gets rejected with "soft, grainy". here is a shot:

The original is here (in case something is wrong with that ...)

This is only one of many examples. So, is it:
-my camera (Nikon D90)?
-my lens (18-200 at 120mm with VR, could it be smudged?)
-autofocus bad (on all of them)?
-my lousy postprocessing? (gimp, high-pass-filter)

Out of 20 submitted photos only 2 have been accepted, I'd really like any pointers on what I'm doing wrong, or how I can tell if an image is "soft". it looks fine to me *sigh*

-Ben

bigtwinky · Dec 2, 2009

I assume by rejected, you are talking about stock photography?

First, I would look at the stock site and post up your question there. Each stock site has different levels and ideas of what is acceptable. Actually, each reviewer has a different level of what they think is acceptable. So the best people to answer why its rejected are those on the stock site (either in a forum or what not).

Did you look at them at a 100% crop and see if you can see any grainynesss in the sky or some softness in the plane? When you do post up on the stock site, make sure you post the uploaded image AND a 100% crop a section of the image.

I think I'm seeing some noise in the sky, around the areas where there are clouds and some slight loss of sharpness on the back edges of the plane, along the wings and tail

biggerben · Dec 2, 2009

I actually mean planespotters.net, a site to upload plane shots. I'm not sure what a stock site is but I'm fairly sure it's something different.

Yes, the sky (and bits of the plane) look a little grainy. But it's either that or an soft aircraft which is also not good.

I'd really be interested if the original shot is bad or if I just suck at post processing!

J.Kendall · Dec 2, 2009

Could be the post processing. What have you tried doing to it?

biggerben · Dec 2, 2009

I've tried sharpening it. I've tried several variations of the unsharp mask and he high pass filter. they all end up being sof + grainy. how do you sharpen an image so it doesn't end up too grainy?

bigtwinky · Dec 2, 2009

Have you looked at a 100% crop of the image?

When its loaded in Photoshop or what not, zoom in to 100% and see the level of sharpness / grainyness

biggerben · Dec 2, 2009

yes, I zoomed into 100% and yes it's grainy

my question is what can I do about it? because either it's too grainy or too soft.

is it the bad photo, or am i just crap at sharpening it? what am i doing wrong?

Inst!nct · Dec 2, 2009

whats your ISO on this?

Big Mike · Dec 2, 2009

What ISO are you shooting at?

A super-zoom lens like that, will not be as good as a pro level zoom or a prime (non zoom) lens. I've heard that the 18-200 Nikon is one of the better lenses in that class...but it's far below the quality of something like the 70-200mm F2.8 VR.

biggerben · Dec 2, 2009

I shot at ISO 200, the lowest possible (Except "L")

Inst!nct · Dec 2, 2009

biggerben said:
I shot at ISO 200, the lowest possible (Except "L")

Are you sure? there looks to be more noise then that, ive never seen the d90 perform so bad at high ISO

biggerben · Dec 2, 2009

Inst!nct said:
biggerben said:

I shot at ISO 200, the lowest possible (Except "L")

Click to expand...

Are you sure? there looks to be more noise then that, ive never seen the d90 perform so bad at high ISO

yes I'm sure. wha do you mean high ISO? 200 is low, not high

Inst!nct · Dec 2, 2009

biggerben said:
Inst!nct said:

biggerben said:

I shot at ISO 200, the lowest possible (Except "L")

Click to expand...

Are you sure? there looks to be more noise then that, ive never seen the d90 perform so bad at high ISO

Click to expand...

yes I'm sure. wha do you mean high ISO? 200 is low, not high

exactly, just didnt word it correctly, i mean that even at high ISO the d90 doesnt perform badly, so its weird that this is happening for you.

biggerben · Dec 2, 2009

yeah, and it's beginning really annoy me ... any ideas how to fix it? buy a new lens? clean it properly?

Big Mike · Dec 2, 2009

Cleaning the lens or even getting a new one, probably won't affect the noise in an image.
You are already shooting at low ISO, so I guess that leaves the processing.

Do you shoot in RAW? If not, you should.
Use the Nikon software to process the RAW files and apply noise reduction if required.

Have you been adjusting the exposure/brightness with software? Adjustments like this can tend to bring out noise in an image.

Also: Expose Right