Clear crisp shots

woody12

woody12

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paul
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Hi, know this sounds stupid but some of my shots seem grainy compared to what I see on this forum. Am shooting with low Iso 100 usually with aperture of 11-16 with my 18-55 lens on Nikon 3100. Also use remote trigger on tripod and generally shot landscapes. Is it the quality of the lens as I know it's the kit lens. Saving for a Nikon 10-20mm but have a 35mm 1.8 lens. I brought this for shooting the kids and portraits, but will it make a difference by shooting landscapes and is there anything else I can do to help crispness and reduce the grainy effect. Just in awe of some of the shots on here and want to improve. Thanks
 
shouldnt get grainy pictures at all with 100 iso, the kit lens will still produce good shots, you tried to sharpen them up on photoshop or nx?
 
Thanks Kieran, yes I am sharping the shots in pp using photoshop which does improve them. They are generally good quality, just making sure if there is any thing else I can do to improve the quality. Perhaps it's movement on a cheap tripod I brought?
 
what quality setting have u got selected on ur camera?
 
I'm assuming you've checked there's nothing on your lens? I'm kind of stumped!
 
The old saying 'this thread is useless without pictures' has never been more true.

Lack of sharpness or definition can be caused by everything from faulty gear to bad technique, exposure issues or just perception.

From my perspective, F11-f16 seems like overkill - what are you shooting (I never get beyond f8 but I'm not really a macro or landscape shooter)
 
Try not go go higher than f/8 for best sharpness, diffraction takes the edge off after that. If it's grainy, the usual cause is under-exposure and/or excessive cropping.
 
thanks for reply, will try to get some examples up but think that cropping and to high aparture can cause my problem. Perhaps its me being picky with my shots
 
woody12 said:
thanks for reply, will try to get some examples up but think that cropping and to high aparture can cause my problem. Perhaps its me being picky with my shots
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Without examples it's impossible to tell - but the usual causes of clarity issues are user error, either camera movement, mis focus, subject movement (wrong ss) badly under or overexposed shots being 'fixed' in PP, other bad PP (multitude of sins), then there's issues caused by soft lenses, high ISO's misfocussing lenses (much rarer than reports would suggest though)

When I was a mechanic we called it 'the loose nut on the steering wheel, in my IT job we call these faults 'PICNIC - problem in chair not in computer'.:D
 
The fine, vivid etc etc setting doesn't apply to Raw shooting, only Jpeg no?

Raw is just that, RAW unedited picture
 
Carbonangel said:
The fine, vivid etc etc setting doesn't apply to Raw shooting, only Jpeg no?

Raw is just that, RAW unedited picture
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Yes and no. I think that if you use Nikon's own raw converting software it will pick up the camera settings for jpeg and apply them to it's own raw conversion as default. You can of course still change all of this to anything you like. If you use other software, it's likely an irrelevance.

I'm 100% with Phil on this one. Far, far to many variable (which Phil has summarised nicely) to make a judgement. A couple of samples with intact exif and I'm sure you'll have an answer in minutes.
 
Phil V said:
Without examples it's impossible to tell - but the usual causes of clarity issues are user error, either camera movement, mis focus, subject movement (wrong ss) badly under or overexposed shots being 'fixed' in PP, other bad PP (multitude of sins), then there's issues caused by soft lenses, high ISO's misfocussing lenses (much rarer than reports would suggest though)

When I was a mechanic we called it 'the loose nut on the steering wheel, in my IT job we call these faults 'PICNIC - problem in chair not in computer'.:D
Click to expand...

:D The old seat to keyboard interface error.
 
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