First thread, back yard flowers

Hi everyone.

I have just recently bought a 50D with the kit 17-85 IS USM lens and after looking at some of the amazing pics in this forum thought I'd contribute.
I have no eye for fancy compositions etc, so when I take a shot of a flower for example, it's simply a flower plonked in the middle!
I need to work on that part bigtime. But I'd like you to C&C on this photo and tell me about any issues that skilled eyes can detect. It looks nice enough on my screen, and i'm happy, but if I don't know if I'm doing anything wrong, I won't improve, so some objective views would be a big help to me.

This is a little water lily flower in my pond. They only last one day and it's late afternoon here, so one could say it's getting a little on in life!
Shot in RAW, (newbie to raw after being almost scared of it for years!)
I used DPP and have added some sharpening in the RGB section and added 1 notch of saturation, saved it to JPG, and cropped and downsized in photoshop to post here. I should have done all of it in DPP I guess? I have also posted a 100% crop to let you look at the shot a bit better to show up any flaws/ good bits either from myself or the settings etc. The flower measures 2" across.

Settings were 1/500 F5.6 ISO 100 zero exposure bias, focal length 76mm metering mode pattern aperture priority. Auto WB. Color representation is uncalibrated (not sure I follow that bit yet) I hand held it, not that that's a biggie with 76mm, IS and 500th

I could only save the 100% pixel shot (2nd one) at level 8 and the resized/cropped one in photoshop at level 9 to fit within the 150K limit here....if that really matters to the quality posted?

cheers
Paul

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Welcome, and congrats on a great camera! I just got mine. Very pretty flower. Composition looks good (filled the frame...didn't cut anything off, blurred background), but it just looks slightly soft to me (as evidenced by your crop). Neither the edges nor the center are very sharp. I've become addicted to focusing using live view whenever possible. Might help, if you didn't use it, and yes a tripod would definitely make achieving perfect focus much easier. Zoom all the way in with live view, and you'll see what I mean. Your kit lens is obviously not the optimal macro/flower lens, but I've seen it produce very crisp, clean shots.

Hi scott, thanks for the tips. No I haven't tried live view yet, but I will explore it tonight for sure.
This is exactly the sort of feedback I'm after. I thought it was quite sharp, but after what you said, and looking at other similar shots in here, I am learning fast what sharp really means! The cropping was Photoshop, I couldn't get close enough to fill the frame as it ran out of close in focus. I'd love a macro lens, but I need/want a L series zoom first. I would use it much more than macro at the moment.

Yes, I love the cam, had it for about 5 days and only around 250 photos old, including about 50 shots of nothing more than itchy fingers when I first brought it home! and due to the weather we have had, I only have about 15 shots taken in sunshine.
The weekends here tomorrow, so I'm going to get very trigger happy once again!

I used to shoot with a minolta 5xi (nothing too fancy) when they came out in the late 80's early 90's?? and apart from a couple of cheap P&S cams since then, I used to shoot occasionally with a borrowed 20D with a very soft 70-300 lens complete with dust throughout. It took me days to PP all the marks from the few decent shots I took! I'm comparing my old shots to the new ones I have taken in the last few days, esp shooting in raw, and I'm absolutely blown away with it. The fact you think they can be better again simply by doing things a little different is a good thing to hear!

Here is one more I did this afternoon. This is the first time I have actually purposely taken photos of flowers, and to be honest, normally don't have an interest in a plain old flower, as nice as some are. I generally take shots of bikes/cars/planes etc.

The bank manager tells me this is an orchid. I'm guessing the same "a bit soft" in the appraisal? And if i can self critique, a bit messy, it's all over the place to me, things randomly everywhere making it look confusing.

Oh, how are the colors/saturation/whit​e balance etc to others out there? I'm just wondering as I read a lot about calibrating monitors etc and just curious if 1: my monitor is close, and 2: my old-ish eyes are seeing correctly.

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Glad to help. I've actually garnered most of my knowledge from this site. Some amazing talent and technicians here. Sounds like we got our cameras on the same day. Funny, a Minolta Maxxum 5 was my last film camera, followed by p&s so we've traveled a similar path.

Admittedly, I'm not at all a flower guy either, but this shot does look much sharper to my eye, and color, saturation looks just fine on my laptop anyways.
Keep 'em coming