Just got my 70-200mm f.4L - Need opinions please!

What do you think of these shots? Did I mess up on settings, or was it my poor lighting choices? I am not overly impressed and I want to get some better photos out of the lens...It could definitely be operator error! What should I do next time?

What don't you like about those shots? Many people would be proud of them.

Same question, what do you perceive as a problem. They look pretty good to me.

Hi,

The first photo is very nice in my opinion but what is the ISO on the second two? I only ask because the appear to be quite noisy. With the second photo, it could be an extremely nice shot with a flashgun to light your subject AND either a higher f-stop or lower to create a better blur or reduce the blur in the background. Photo 3 is a nice candid shot so I can't say anything other than the noise comment but I would have tried to shoot this with the lens wide open to further take attenion away from the background.

Thanks,
Justin

It's hard to say, I would say normally the 70-200 should have a better contrast, colors and detail than that.

It all depends on the time it was taken ealry morning sun does not have that much contrast or late evening.

I took this with the IS lens at 192mm at F4 and iso100. Shutter speed of 1/500th, this is with no post processing raw to jpeg using dpp.

Make sure that in the camera its set for sRBG and try the standard picture profile setting.

did you shoot raw? Any editing at all?

Since you have image editing turned on, all I did was boost the saturation and contrast, then sharpened.

I did shoot in raw, but the computer I'm on won't accept the CR2 files so I've saved them onto DH's computer.

ISO on the second shot was 400.

I think the noise is what is bothering me the most. The second shot is really noisy and there's no detail in the face. I think I expecting every photo to look as sharp as what Yaamon posted...

The top two were in the evening, so maybe it was my lighting...

Thanks for your comments!

And Skrim17, I love your edit!

The noise has nothing to do with the lens. That means that you underexposed. In general, if you slightly overexpose images in digital and then bring them back in post, you get much better noise performance. See:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorial​s/expose-right.shtml

In your second shot, you needed to either slightly overexpose the background or add some fill in flash. In the first case you do this by dialing in some exposure compensation. In the second case, set the exposure for the background to be exposed properly and then set the flash to fire. The EOS flash circuitry will properly expose the foreground (subject) thereby bringing up the girl to be properly exposed (not in shadow) and strongly, if not completely eliminate, the noise.

Makes sense?

That said, I think your images are great. The reproduction of color is superb, the contrast is just about perfect to my eye, and it is sharp like one would expect from a great piece of L glass like you have. Canon does recommend that some modest sharpening be applied. The don't do it in camera (unless you dial it in - not recommended) so as not to destroy detail. There is a Canon white paper around somewhere that details recommended sharpening settings on Canon EOS DSLRs but I can't find it at the moment. I think it is something like 300/?/0.25 or something like that.

J.

Thanks JohnJ - I learned a lot from this trip to beach, and I think your comments on the exposure are correct.

So much to learn!