Lens or camera operator?

[Adam PV]

Hi,

I'm Adam from Warrington. I'm new to photography and new to the forum.

Recently I bought the folowing:-

Canon 350D
Kit lens
Tamron AF70-300mm (F4.5-5.6 LD macro 1:2)

A recent visit to Oulton park in Cheshire saw my first real chance to test my kit and practice also.

I took over 500 images and to be honest, once I got home I was pretty disappointed. The question is; is it the cheap lens or my newbie 'skills' that are making a hash of the results? I was using the Tamron lens, please see the images below.

Chromatic aberations:

http://images.fotopic.net/yxuktg.jpg

Bigger image here (http://images.fotopic.net/?id=33387316&noresize=1).

http://images.fotopic.net/yxukw2.jpg

Bigger image here (http://images.fotopic.net/?id=33387446&noresize=1).

Soft focus

http://images.fotopic.net/yxukw3.jpg

Bigger image here (http://images.fotopic.net/?id=33387447&noresize=1).

http://images.fotopic.net/yxukrc.jpg

Bigger image here (http://images.fotopic.net/?id=33387273&noresize=1).

My gallery is here (http://adam.photos.cn.com/)

Any tips or advice would be welcomed :)


Adam

[Ephemeral]

CA comes from the lens.

With regard to soft focus. What focus mode where you using? I beleive AI Server is a little hit and miss, or so I've read. So if you were tracking that a car moving towards you it might have just focused a little off.

What is the focus like on a still object?

[Jim G]

Welcome to the forums :)

I own that Tamron - it's not really that fast focusing and I don't believe I've gotten an image out of it that I'm fully satisfied with.. if you're shooting fast moving objects like cars chances are that the focus motor can't keep up...

What exactly is it that you're not satisfied with regarding the shots? The framing seems as though it could be a little better in a few of them (closer on the last one, not cutting off the cars in #1 and #2) or do you more mean image quality?

[lakiluno]

What apertures where you at? The exif isn't intact. With any consumer level long zoom, you really need to be at f/8 or smaller to get good sharpness, both from lens sharpness issues, and because at f/5.6 you don't get as much of the vehicle in focus.

[Adam PV]

CA comes from the lens.

With regard to soft focus. What focus mode where you using? I beleive AI Server is a little hit and miss, or so I've read. So if you were tracking that a car moving towards you it might have just focused a little off.

What is the focus like on a still object?

I was using AI servo, tracking the car as it moved towards me. Still focus is excellent... with the other lens...


Welcome to the forums :)

I own that Tamron - it's not really that fast focusing and I don't believe I've gotten an image out of it that I'm fully satisfied with.. if you're shooting fast moving objects like cars chances are that the focus motor can't keep up...

What exactly is it that you're not satisfied with regarding the shots? The framing seems as though it could be a little better in a few of them (closer on the last one, not cutting off the cars in #1 and #2) or do you more mean image quality?

I'm talking about image quality, the image posted was just used as an example. Not impressed with the quality, though I'm not sure it's not me being a numbty.


What apertures where you at? The exif isn't intact. With any consumer level long zoom, you really need to be at f/8 or smaller to get good sharpness, both from lens sharpness issues, and because at f/5.6 you don't get as much of the vehicle in focus.

I was using F/5.6, the weather wasn't all that good so I had the ISO at 200. Was this the wrong approach?

[condyk]

Have you post processed them? They look ok for the gear you have, other than the compositions aren't so good. That should come with time and as your eye develops.

[Adam PV]

Have you post processed them? They look ok for the gear you have, other than the compositions aren't so good. That should come with time and as your eye develops.

No processing, other than a resize with ACDsee.

Composition-wise, what would you do differently? Some of the rally car images I'm prettyhappy with, also I was limited where I could stand on the track surrounding :(

[Bob_A]

What apertures where you at? The exif isn't intact. With any consumer level long zoom, you really need to be at f/8 or smaller to get good sharpness, both from lens sharpness issues, and because at f/5.6 you don't get as much of the vehicle in focus.

The exif is intact for all of these. Of course, maybe they've been recently updated ... :)

[GyRob]

looks ok to me just need a bit of tweaking in PS . a touch more yellow,contrast, and a little brightness.
Rob.

[Bob_A]

I was using F/5.6, the weather wasn't all that good so I had the ISO at 200. Was this the wrong approach?

Nope, you weren't at f/5.6 and ISO 200 for all of these shots:

#1 ... f/4, ISO 400, 1/3200s
#2 ... f/5.6, ISO 400, 1/4000s
#3 ... f/10, ISO 200, 1/200s
#4 ... f/5.6, ISO 400, 1/1000s

[Adam PV]

Nope, you weren't at f/5.6 and ISO 200 for all of these shots:

#1 ... f/4, ISO 400, 1/3200s
#2 ... f/5.6, ISO 400, 1/4000s
#3 ... f/10, ISO 200, 1/200s
#4 ... f/5.6, ISO 400, 1/1000s

Oh, OK. I thought I had the camera set to aperture priority.

I'm a noob ;)

[Adam PV]

looks ok to me just need a bit of tweaking in PS . a touch more yellow,contrast, and a little brightness.
Rob.

Nice job. I'm not too shabby with PS when it comes to levels, just I wasn't blown away with the raw image.

[condyk]

You won't be happy with RAw right out the camera unless you use very high quality lenses and expose perfectly ;-) then they can look pretty good. Even then the shots will benefit greatly from decent post-processing. All shots will. It doesn't need to take much time.

[form]

One of the reasons I decided against getting the Tamron 70-300 was because I saw very strong purple fringing in contrast areas of shots it was used for. Sigma's 70-300 APO lens did much better in that respect.

The ones without fringing don't look bad at all; it's just a matter of adjusting brightness, contrast, saturation, etc; small things. Out of focus areas are the result of the limited DoF, and the cars themselves really aren't out of focus.

[Pete]

Digital SLR's expect you to do some post production work to get the best out of the images. When I first got mine, I was similarly somewhat disappointed not to get perfect images. Then I learnt how to post process and I'm far happier now with my work.