Why the blur?

[robertwsimpson]

#1: it's spelled LENS
#2: I bet if you drop to ISO 800 and use a slightly slower shutter, you'd see a much better picture. The only thing that would be blurred due to motion would be the ball and the end of the bat. I doubt anything else is moving fast enough.

 

[Derrel]

You have done absolutely nothing wrong. At all. The lens is at its widest aperture, f/4. The ISO level is high on a small-format sensor, at 1600 ISO. Your shutter speed is 1/1000 second, which has frozen the batter; the only thing that is not 100 percent frozen is the ball leaving the bat. The ball is just ever-so-slightly out of round, but it's not elongated, like it would have been at say 1/500 second or 1/400 second.

I pulled the image into Photoshop. I adjusted the levels in the red,green,and blue channels individually. Your original exposure was adequate--not under-exposed at all. This is basically as good as your particular camera/zoom lens camera will do at ISO 1600 under open shade conditions. The photo will someday become a cherished family memory. It looks pretty decent to me,all things considered. If you want a better lens, you would have gotten significantly higher resolving power and higher contrast shooting with the Canon 85mm f/1.8 EF lens, but this is decent for a consumer zoom shot wide-open at f/4. As a smaller image, it looks quite good; pixel-peeping it and the quality's not as good as it'd be if you bought a new camera and a new lens, but hey--this image shows a nice scene, good timing,good focus,happy group of backyard ballplayers.

A home photographer could not have made this full-color image in 1975 on color print film with an ISO of 100 and a small,light zoom lens...

 

[dhilberg]

This is basically as good as your particular camera/zoom lens camera will do at ISO 1600 under open shade conditions.

I'm going to say the same thing. This is as good as you're going to get considering the conditions and equipment used. The image looks fine to me. The 100% crop isn't the prettiest, but images aren't meant to be viewed at 100% from close up.

 

[JayClark79]

Thanks alot for the comments Derrel.. I guess I should of said I am looking for a zoom lens that will give me better results then the current lens I already have.. or if i was doing something wrong with the lense...

I just snapped this shot off, the details are below as you can see even with the ISO of 100 its still pretty noisy.. I think i have a friend that has the higher quality version of this lens (with the IS and USM) ill have to see if i can borrow it to see if it has the same results..... Everyone else i know uses Nikon

1/320
ISO 100
f5.6

 

[robertwsimpson]

that one just looks out of focus. post a 100% crop of it.

 

[JayClark79]

but images aren't meant to be viewed at 100% from close up.

hmm maybe this is my problem lol

yes the crop was done just to show noise.

 

[robertwsimpson]

if you view your pictures at 100% you're going to be frustrated no matter what you have... unless you want to spring for the 1d mkIII and some L lenses... but that's THOUSANDS and thousands...

 

[Goontz]

The difference you'll get with a lens that can zoom more is simply that you don't have to crop as much (assuming you zoomed in to what you what when you shot). Zoom in or crop enough on any image and it looses detail.

As for the image of the tractor, the whole thing just looks blurry, not noisy.

 

[JayClark79]

Ok this is making more sence now.. Ill get some more shots with this lens and try to keep an eye on my ISO and try to zoom in to the crop I would like, and see how it goes thanks to EVERYONE for your help!

 

[NateWagner]

Well, Jay at least in this image you wouldn't need the 300mm, you're only at 85mm so really for this particular shot that's all you would need. You can get a 70-200 2.8 for under 1000, or a 70-200 f/4L for about 500 (which is still generally faster than the one you are currently using).

Secondly, on the Rebel line 1600 ISO is really quite high. It is/can be usable for purposes like web images and the like, but won't be usable for 100% crops.

Really you could have been shooting at ISO 400 and shutter speed of 250 and probably been much better off. (that or if you had stopped down a bit and gone at about ISO 800 shutter speed 250 at 5.6 or something of the like). Either of those options would probably have improved the noise and softness of the image.

Finally that lens is a pretty basic level lens and in general is not known for its incredible sharpness. Even so, the shot looks fine and really isn't something I would complain about too much as is, though I'd probably do a little bit of noise reduction on it.

 

[anel]

just don't use iso 1600 outside, you don't need it.. even with that baseball scene u didn't need it... use iso 800 at daylight for your maximum no matter what.. and at 100% crop it still looks ok for what your settings were, but remember with your lens the picture will reduce its quality in the 200-300mm range severely.. just maybe just shoot to around 250mm maximum and crop then.

 

[Samanax]

This shot was in jpg...
I think i get the same noise with a lower ISO this was just 1 example... I remember setting a lower ISO and the image being very dark.... 1 because of the higher shutter, and 2 because it was dusk and the whole yard was in shade.

I never did like the JPEGs that came out of my XTi, they always looked soft and not as sharp as I thought they could be.

Then I started shooting in RAW and never looked back. The RAW images were always more sharp and had better color and contrast. Sure you gotta do PP on them but to me it was a small price to pay to get images I could be happy with.

 

[GeneralBenson]

if you view your pictures at 100% you're going to be frustrated no matter what you have... unless you want to spring for the 1d mkIII and some L lenses... but that's THOUSANDS and thousands...

I don't think that's true at all. Or atleast I hope it's not. I would think you should be ableto get sharp shots out of just about any camera. I'm used to shooting with Pentax, and I can't really comment on Canikon, but anything less than sharp at 100% is unacceptable to me. I'm used to pictures that look flawless at 100%. I have a K10d, K20d, and all sort of different glass, and I used to think that this kind of sharpness was to be expected from any system. But more and more I hear people referring to softer pictures as normal for enthusiast dslr equipment.

 

[robertwsimpson]

if I take a picture with my 50mm at f5 with ISO100 and shutter 1/8000, it might look sharp at 100%... if it doesn't, that's why God invented post processing.

 

[GeneralBenson]

Has anyone ever told you that you look like Rob Lowe?