my beautiful pink flower tree

[Shadowbox]

d

 

[MWG]

pretty tree

 

[lyonsroar]

I park under one of these suckers. No thank you.

Looking a little warm to me... anyone else?

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

I am curious about your workflow. The image is very pixelated for the file size. This makes it hard to tell how well it's focused.

 

[o hey tyler]

Camera Maker: NIKON CORPORATION
Camera Model: NIKON D40X
Lens: 18.0-55.0 mm f/3.5-5.6
Image Date: 2011-05-11 13:33:47 -0600
Focal Length: 30mm (35mm equivalent: 45mm)
Focus Distance: 0.6m
Aperture: f/4.2
Exposure Time: 0.0005 s (1/2000)
ISO equiv: 1600
Exposure Bias: +0.67 EV
Metering Mode: Matrix
Exposure: aperture priority (semi-auto)
White Balance: Manual
Light Source: Shade
Flash Fired: No
GPS Coordinate: undefined, undefined

You exposed this photo at ISO 1600. Using a high ISO degrades image quality, especially on older cameras. If you had exposed this on ISO 100 (and if my math is correct), you could have got away with your settings being:

Aperture: f/4.2
Exposure Time: 1/500
ISO equiv: 100

This would have achieved the same exposure, but with better overall image quality.

 

[Ginu]

Nice tree, lower ISO would make this even better

 

[subscuck]

Yeah, it looks warm to me to. Here are some of my suggestions:

ISO 1600. Why? You were outside under abundant sun light. ISO should have been 100. You have to start paying attention to ISO settings vs lighting conditions.

White Balance. I know someone in another thread told you not to use auto WB. I disagree. Auto works fine most of the time. It's where I have mine set pretty much all the time. The reason you were getting orange cast with your indoor pics is because that's the color of incandescent lights. In that specific case, I would use Tungsten for WB. Outside I use Auto, inside during the day with no flash, auto. Try it. Reshoot this image with ISO at 100 and wb set to auto.

I notice your in camera settings like sharpening, saturation, etc., are dialed way up. I would zero them out and make those adjustments in post.

 

[Shadowbox]

Thank you for the tips. I actually forgot the ISO was SO high. I had put it high that morning when indoors trying to get a good pic, and when outside I thought I had it set to auto ISO and then dialed in the rest, but nope, it was the opposite! I did take off autowhite and put on shade, since I was actually under the tree and taking photos outward. I will try it again with auto wb and ISO 100. Only today the conditions are not the same, we had a thunderstorm last night and today everything is wet and gloomy.

I will take all of this advice and apply it. Also I did not change the settings other than ISO, WB & aperture after I received this camera. Oh and I changed it from raw to jpg. It was a used camera and I think the person who sold it to me is a professional photographer. I will try to change those other things you mention subscuck.

Bitter Jeweler, I cropped this image down from a much large view, will that also cause it to be pixelated? Thanks, it doesn't look so pixelated on my screen until after I add it on photobucket, if I had this happen when uploading to a photo lab (not this photo per-say) would that then print out with the pixels showing?

I took about 50 in this same area/type of shot, and a few were very out of focus, I did have autofocus on but I also tried manual. I am actually liking manual focus more. Autofocus fights with me and won't take a photo half the time. I think this one looks out of focus on most of it other than one little flower in the lower left corner. I have others which are more focused but you can see a blurry house in the bg, yuck!

 

[mishele]

I would work a little on your composition. The way you have your shot setup now the majority of it is the tree branch. I would concentrate more on a bundle of flowers. I don't know exactly what is going on in the color of this shot but is not very flattering.
Keep shooting!!

 

[Shadowbox]

This was the original photo

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Bitter Jeweler, I cropped this image down from a much large view, will that also cause it to be pixelated? Thanks, it doesn't look so pixelated on my screen until after I add it on photobucket, if I had this happen when uploading to a photo lab (not this photo per-say) would that then print out with the pixels showing?

Ah!

Cropping it, wouldn't cause pixelation. Enlarging after cropping would.
The bigger issue may be with photobucket. Photobucket has/had a setting for how big your image can be before it compresses it for you. Never let photobucket compress your images! I am willing to bet that this is the biggest culprit here, exacerbating the other (ISO, Saturation) issues.

I don't think you would have this problem uploading to a photolab, they are not gonna compress the image. But they may need to enlarge it...

 

[Shadowbox]

Taken with the suggested settings, although even when I am in the mode to control aperture it doesn't let me .. frustrating, I can only go down so far and then it says 'subject too dark'. Anyway, I also have a SB-700 now attached to the camera and had the filter set to amber because it was making the photos super white.

 

[photocist]

Taken with the suggested settings, although even when I am in the mode to control aperture it doesn't let me .. frustrating, I can only go down so far and then it says 'subject too dark'. Anyway, I also have a SB-700 now attached to the camera and had the filter set to amber because it was making the photos super white.

shoot manual and you wont have those problems

 

[Shadowbox]

I try to shoot manual and I still can't force the aperture to lower, my camera always gives 'subject to dark' even when I am in direct sunlight. I'm still learning, thanks for the suggestion but manual is too much for me right now anyway despite having tried.. I am just focusing on mastering one thing at a time.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

This one doesn't have the pixelation. I can see where you focused too.

If you are using flash on something like this, you could have used a smaller aperture for greater DoF.

I don't care for the shallow DoF here. I think, typically, shallow DoF works when it isolates one subject. I this instance it isn't doing that, and to my eye, the whole branch is the subject. All that repitition is the subject. That's how I see it anyway.