the way it did when i was actually there. I am starting to get frustrated. i did order a different lense though, a 17-40L

<img src="http://www.filefarmer.com/nadroj81/pictures/IMG_0175a.jpg">

<img src="http://www.filefarmer.com/nadroj81/pictures/IMG_0178a.jpg">

ISO400 shouldn't look that grainy on the XT, especially at f/8 and f/10. For shots like that you need a tripod, slower shutter speed and lower ISO to capture the colors correctly. Also filters to cut the glare and add contrast to the shot. Hope this helps.

<img src="http://www.compupet.com/awot/CopyIMG_0175a.jpg">

From what I can tell... F10, 1/200s, ISO400. You could probably shoot at ISO200 to reduce the amount of noise.

I'm suspecting that you're not happy with how it appears in terms of color and saturation? What adjustments have you done, since I noticed the JPG was created with PS CS.

was setting and there was a lot of ambur, but it didnt show up.

with the settings, but didn't change anything.

so do people normally shoot at 200? I never know what settings i should be using.

i have taken seem very grainy, even close up shots and such. what type of filters would you recommend?

cleaned it up a bit... not sure where your ambers are though... does the one you posted look different than the raw image you have?

i have a CS for dummies book, i need to get around to reading it.

Lower ISO basically means less noise. It will also be darker compared to higher ISOs (100 darker than 200), but if conditions don't call for extra light-capturing ability, lower is better. Low-light or indoor shooting may require a bump up of your ISO if aperture/shutter can't handle it alone.

In your RAW conversion program crank the Luminence(sp) up to 100%, then smooth it out even more once in photoshop, 3rd party plugin or whatever. You need to get a good book or tutorial on digital workflow. It's too much to explain in one post...sorry. Hey at least you have the RAW image so when you do figure it out you can go back and fix it!!

Use one of the simple rules of 1/focal length as the minimum shutter. You will need to factor in the 1.6 crop factor, so seeing that you were shooting at 35mm, anything around 1/60th would be sufficient assuming you have a steady handy and not using a tripod. If the shutter speed is still high then bump down the ISO.

Sometimes adjusting the levels will bring out the noise that's not typically seen. Was the original image exposed properly?

It looks like the exposure, white balance and smoothing are off. Do you have photoshop CS 2? It's RAW conversion tool will let you fix all three of those problems very quickly.

What camera were you using? ISO400 should be pretty clean on most modern dSLR's. These look like they were taken on an S60/S70 or something of the sort (very grainy).

In the second pic you can clearly tell the white balance was off (white boats are bluish). Were you using auto white balance? Regardless, if you shot in raw, you can fix that when converting to jpg.

cause grain, but it kills color and damages contrast.

Mike S

it will give you a RAW utility with a lot of different sliders and tabs. It looks like you need to warm the color temperature, lower the exposure compensation, increase the contrast and add more smoothing. The RAW converter does most these things in "auto" mode pretty well.

it will solve your problems. Also make sure to shoot in 100 ISO to get rid of the noise.

That oooh ahhh feeling you get from being there will never transfer to a picture if you just take a snapshot trying to capture 'everything' you see in a single shot. Instead, try to create a center of interest by focusing on a particular element, such as a boat, a mooring, a building, or a reflection off the water, then use the marina/skyline as a backdrop. In the above pictures, my eyes are not sure what to focus on first, so they jet around all over the place -- this creates a mundane feel to the shot.

The amount of grain in those pictures is *much* higher than I would expect for that camera.

I think I want to retract that statement. Sometimes it's easy to forget that we're looking at 100% crops when viewing the full size image. At that magnification, noise will be very apparent.

Here's an example of an image at ISO1250. Pay particular attention to the OOF areas on the bottom right (where you'll see a good bit of noise).
<img src="http://rajashar.smugmug.com/photos/31742761-O.jpg">

Now a resized version of the same picture...
<img src="http://rajashar.smugmug.com/photos/31742761-L.jpg">

Did you notice that the foreground boats are completely in shadow while the background buildings are in bright sunlight? This confuses us as to what the focal point of the shot is supposed to be. A different time of day or cloud cover arrangement would probably make for a better overall shot.

You might be able to reduce the grain with noise ninja but the color is really off. Maybe you accidentally changed the color balance on your camera. Try reverting back to the default settings.

A 17-40L lens will definitely help the sharpness, but the main problems seem to be with the way you set it up.

Go back and shoot again at ISO100 with WB set to sun/clouds depending on the weather, you should get a notable difference.

<center><img src="http://pictureposter.audiworld.com/9579/img_0175a-2.jpg"></center><p>you could also have done some shadow/highlighting on the raw to get rid of the overexposed areas, and bring some detail out of the shadows.

as you can see, there's still some green and red left in the clouds, and it was probably bluer that what I made it. Also there's some greens now in the shadows.

does this look more like it was during that day? if you want it to always shoot correctly bring a 18% gray card and do custom white balance on your camera.

bottom of page 58 makes a reference to it. It's in the white balance section of the manual.