what am i doing wrong here?

what is causing the faded white specs on the sky? JPEG artifacts?

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i am thinking the settings are slow..but I am most likely wrong..

It looks a bit grainy to me.

Have you tried running it through noiseninja?

It's called noise. Your image is seriously underexposed. That little ole flash did all it could but it wasn't up to lighting up the sky.

I ran the image thru Neat Image and it got rid of the noise. I then ran levels on it to set the white point. Looks pretty good.

I was about to say the same thing that Dave said. What you see is noise due to extreme underexposure. In looking for a reason for the underexposure, I noticed that you had the camera set to Manual exposure. I also wondered why you used the flash since it can't help and might hurt the exposure if there is anything in the near foreground that would reflect light back to the camera.

bill boehme wrote in post #5919745
I was about to say the same thing that Dave said. What you see is noise due to extreme underexposure. I looking for a reason for the underexposure, I noticed that you had the camera set to Manual exposure. I also wondered why you used the flash since it can't help and might hurt the exposure if there is anything in the near foreground that would reflect light back to the camera.

I guess if i didnt use the flash it would not underexpose that much...., thats why i upped the EV a little bit to compensate the darkness, but it wasnt sufficiente enough... next time i should just shoot without the flash.

Thanks.

chop4life wrote in post #5920922
I guess if i didnt use the flash it would not underexpose that much...., thats why i upped the EV a little bit to compensate the darkness, but it wasnt sufficiente enough... next time i should just shoot without the flash.

Thanks.

BTW, I neglected to say earlier welcome to POTN. I think that you will find this to be a helpful and friendly place to learn and share about photography.

Primarily, I think that the reason for the underexposure was due to using Manual exposure with the the aperture, shutter, and ISO values not adjusted to give the right exposure value. The fact that the flash was used is sort of a minor factor that might affect the outcome if it takes control of the shutter speed in order to have proper X synchronization, but usually will not be a problem.

One important tidbit about built-in flashes is to know their limitations -- they are tiny and generally only good for things like people shots within a range of about 3 to 10 feet from the camera. Also, because of their low energy, they are best when used only as "fill" lighting rather than being used as the primary light source. Finally, it is best if the primary light is not fluorescent because it is a significantly different color than the color of the flash. The problem that this causes is that areas that are in the shadows caused by the flash will be an ugly brownish green and the areas that are in the shadows of the fluorescent light will tend to be blue. However, the fluorescent lights normally do not have the distinct sharp edged shadows that the flash units produce since they are not point sources like the flash produces.

I hope that this answer is not too confusing nor too simplistic since I can tell that you already know a lot about using a camera's functions. Your shot has very good composition which shows that you are creative. Shooting sunsets can be a very challenging undertaking and camera metering systems often fail to respond correctly. One way to get a good exposure of a sunset is to use the shotgun approach -- shoot a number of bracketed shots to see which looks best. Sometimes, what might be considered the best in a technical sense, may not be what you want from a creative perspective. I will confess that I sometimes take dozens of sunset shots to try to get at least a couple good ones. Then I study the "bad" ones to try to see what could be improved.

I am not sure of the range of options on an A560 but pushing the ISO would have helped with exposure but not noise (generally the higher the ISO the more noise you generate). At f2.6 you are probably at or near your lower limit. That leaves shutter speed and below the 1/60 or so I would use a tripod for the shot.

bill boehme wrote in post #5922423
BTW, I neglected to say earlier welcome to POTN. I think that you will find this to be a helpful and friendly place to learn and share about photography.

Primarily, I think that the reason for the underexposure was due to using Manual exposure with the the aperture, shutter, and ISO values not adjusted to give the right exposure value. The fact that the flash was used is sort of a minor factor that might affect the outcome if it takes control of the shutter speed in order to have proper X synchronization, but usually will not be a problem.

One important tidbit about built-in flashes is to know their limitations -- they are tiny and generally only good for things like people shots within a range of about 3 to 10 feet from the camera. Also, because of their low energy, they are best when used only as "fill" lighting rather than being used as the primary light source. Finally, it is best if the primary light is not fluorescent because it is a significantly different color than the color of the flash. The problem that this causes is that areas that are in the shadows caused by the flash will be an ugly brownish green and the areas that are in the shadows of the fluorescent light will tend to be blue. However, the fluorescent lights normally do not have the distinct sharp edged shadows that the flash units produce since they are not point sources like the flash produces.

I hope that this answer is not too confusing nor too simplistic since I can tell that you already know a lot about using a camera's functions. Your shot has very good composition which shows that you are creative. Shooting sunsets can be a very challenging undertaking and camera metering systems often fail to respond correctly. One way to get a good exposure of a sunset is to use the shotgun approach -- shoot a number of bracketed shots to see which looks best. Sometimes, what might be considered the best in a technical sense, may not be what you want from a creative perspective. I will confess that I sometimes take dozens of sunset shots to try to get at least a couple good ones. Then I study the "bad" ones to try to see what could be improved.

Thanks for the welcome, i still have to learn how to use the manual settings on the new camera (i have around 160 shots so far). Your explanation about flash usage is very informative! Like you said the best way to learn is to take a bunch of pictures of the same subject with different settings, and then pick the best one.

Heres a shot that came out better from the batch and is exposed slightly better on the sky.

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Titus213 wrote in post #5922546
I am not sure of the range of options on an A560 but pushing the ISO would have helped with exposure but not noise (generally the higher the ISO the more noise you generate). At f2.6 you are probably at or near your lower limit. That leaves shutter speed and below the 1/60 or so I would use a tripod for the shot.

Yes, the A560 does not have manual aperture control. If i upped the ISO to 200, the noise wouldnt be that noticeable anyway, plus i didnt use a tripod(i need to buy one).

Thanks!