How to do make my photos sharper and reduce noise

[paulina152]

I recently took this picture and well it didn't come out as sharp and it came out with some noise. I know there was bad lighting and it wasn't tripod stand still but are there ways that in these conditions my pictures could come out better??? Plus i didn't use flash because the picture won't look good with it being a close-up/macro shot.

And this is what the pictures come out like outside with good lighting and no tripod stand.

 

[Big Mike]

Your problem is the shutter speed, which was only 1/4.

With a shutter speed that slow, any movement by the subject, or the camera, will cause blur....and if the camera is in your hands, there will be some movement.

There is a rule of thumb for the minimum shutter speed you should have when holding the camera. You want to have a shutter speed that is at least 1/focal length.
Your shot was taken with a focal length of 105mm, so you would want a shutter speed of at least 1/100. Your 1/4 was just way too slow.

Now, because of the light that you were shooting in, if you had used a shutter speed of 1/100, your shot would have been very underexposed. You were probably already maxed out on your aperture at F3.5 and the ISO was getting pretty high at 800. You could have turned up the ISO even more, to get a faster shutter speed...but that just introduces more noise...especially on a camera like that.

You could add more light. That means using flash or some other light source. Or waiting until there is more natural light, or moving to a location where there is more light.

The last thing you could do, is to take the camera movement out of the equations by using a tripod. You should also use the self time (or a remote) when using a tripod, so that the camera doesn't move at all. This should let you shoot at any shutter speed...and because of that, you could set whatever aperture & ISO you want. You have to make sure that the flower doens't move during the exposure though.