Grainy Photos

[mdaddyrabbit]

I take photos of my little girl which is 2 years old, I shoot mostly outside with the 70-200mm f/4 L. On a sunny day I us a f/5.6 to f/8 ISO 100 1/125 but every photo the skin looks grainy then whe I use the unsharp mask to correct it seems to get worse. Could someone help me figure this out. Also I am shooting in RAW large with my 20d. I am really disappointed with the majority of my stuff. Very discouraging. I love photography and have a strong passion to become better but I dont see any great improvements no matter what I do so evidently I am doing everything wrong. I am to the point I have considered giving up photography. Just really in the dumps with the whole situation. Please help me before I stop doing what I enjoy so much.

[tim]

This isn't really a pro issue, it's a photography issue, but no matter.

Sharpening noisy photos will always make the noise work - that's the nature of sharpening. I'm very suprised you're getting that problem at ISO 100, my ISO 100 photos are pretty much noise free, and even ISO 400 have only a tiny bit. If you can post a full size JPG (with EXIF data) or even better a RAW somewhere, or email it to me, I can take a look at it for you. My email address is on the home page of my web site (http://mrwild.co.nz).

[mrclark321]

Try resetting your camera to factory default, maybe something was changed that you have not noticed. How do the pics turn out in auto mode?
Can you post some pics?

Dan

[mdaddyrabbit]

This is one of the photos

[PhotosGuy]

On a sunny day I us a f/5.6 to f/8 ISO 100 1/125 but every photo the skin looks grainy That exposure should work on a backlit face a sunny day, but it's underexposed. Why I'm not sure. Maybe you have exposure compensation dialed in, so Dan's advice might work.
What can help you out with this particular pic might be to process it in RSE which has controls for noise, etc. This pic was NOT processed in RSE, & there's a lot of latitude in RAW as you can see here:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=43761&highlight=sunliner
Good luck! ;-)

[tim]

I don't see any grain in that pic, which isn't suprising because you've posted a resized version not the original.