Photos came out grainy

Aapoll · Oct 20, 2013

Thank you. I guess I am my own biggest critique. I found them to be not as sharp as I had hoped and I just felt the over all quality was poor. I'm new at editing as well so sharpening them after the fact without overdoing it is sometimes difficult. I literally only learned about curves a couple weeks ago. So much to learn.

Thanks for the compliments on number 2. The cryer is my baby! He's usually the happiest kid out of all of them, for what ever reason this day he decided he was going to cry everytime he was put down.

I think I have my priorities messed up. The pictures I think are good have many things that need changing and the ones I think are terrible aren't so bad after all.

KmH · Oct 20, 2013

Aapoll said:
Looking through the pictures again I did find a few were under exposed but most were right where they should be.

What criteria do you use to judge under, just right, or over exposure?

Aapoll · Oct 20, 2013

I have a hard time with eyeballing it. Honestly I spent a lot of time trying to find a fool proof method and the closest I found was using the histogram. If there are no big gaps at either end I figure exposure is ok. If there is another way or better ways then please let me know. I seem to be more underexposed then over exposed.

dsm.iv.tr · Oct 21, 2013

Aapoll said:
Thank you. I guess I am my own biggest critique. I found them to be not as sharp as I had hoped and I just felt the over all quality was poor. I'm new at editing as well so sharpening them after the fact without overdoing it is sometimes difficult. I literally only learned about curves a couple weeks ago. So much to learn.

I think you should be critical of your work, but be aware of any bias you might hold against yourself for being, say, a "beginner" or an "amateur". As you said, there is so much to learn, but you don't have to learn it all at once. If exposure is slowly becoming clear to you, perhaps you'll find that changing one more variable at a time is useful - eg. make a bunch of photos, then practice using curves to simulate specific effects like "color film negative" or "cross-processing". on some of your favourite photos. Perhaps you'll find that the in-camera adjustments are fun and exciting to practice with, as well as being instantly rewarding (for JPEG or raw + JPEG mode), allowing you to experiment with different values of whatever sliders you have available to you in the moment as opposed to when you're at home. Beyond software, experimenting with the ways that focal length and perspective (perspective created by your physical location when the shutter goes off, and focal length being a property of the lens) interact may well yield interesting results for subject that aren't people (or maybe you want to keep your friend's face the same size, but magnify the background and step to the left to get rid of anything distracting).

My point really is: take it slow, work at things somewhat-methodically and with an eye to experimentation, and you'll "get" each thing.

Aapoll said:
I think I have my priorities messed up. The pictures I think are good have many things that need changing and the ones I think are terrible aren't so bad after all.

Unless you're really keen on making money really quickly with the photos you make, I believe what matters at this point is what *you* think is good. As you gain skills like the example above, your good will only get better.