What am I doing wrong? Is my gear faulty?

I'm pretty new to DSLR having come from a Powershot S3 and solely using the manual setting for taking photos. I've recently purchased from Adorama a new T1i / 500d, refurbished 17-55 and 10-22 lens. I feel I have a grasping of ISO settings, apeture, shutter speed (BUT I do realise the short focal length of the Powershot is greatly different from a DSLR).

I'm after feedback about whether it's me that's producing images that don't seem to be sharp enough or jump out at me, or is it the camera?

I'm thinking it's not the lens as both lenses can't be soft right?? Especially given the school of thought that refurbished lens are potentially better as they actually pass through human hands rather than off a production line??

The building picture has the sharpness at 7, contrast 1, 17-55, f/6.3, ISO 400, 1/8 sec

Manhattan picture is set to the Standard picture style, 17-55, f/5.6, ISO 100, 1/800sec.

Thanks!!

I see no pictures.

The first supposed picture @ 1/8sec, is that with IS on?

Can you post up some examples?

IVIax wrote in post #8577884
I see no pictures.

The first supposed picture @ 1/8sec, is that with IS on?

Seconded..

Some general things however, JPEGs from most SLRs will lack pop, you might want to consider shooting RAW and getting into post processing...

I know its a general complaint when people go from point and shoot to dSLR that things just dont pop the same sometimes...at least at first, then you learn the tricks and you get the poppy saturated images

Sorry, they're coming. Figured I might try do online ones where you can see exact EXIFF and other info. Uploading now. Thanks

Oh, and IS was always on for the 17-55 lens.

KenjiS wrote in post #8577938
Seconded..

Some general things however, JPEGs from most SLRs will lack pop, you might want to consider shooting RAW and getting into post processing...

I know its a general complaint when people go from point and shoot to dSLR that things just dont pop the same sometimes...at least at first, then you learn the tricks and you get the poppy saturated images

You can do the same by selecting a different shooting style or changing the parameters yourself. Bump the contrast, saturation and sharpness and you'll get that pop.

gjl711 wrote in post #8577984
You can do the same by selecting a different shooting style or changing the parameters yourself. Bump the contrast, saturation and sharpness and you'll get that pop.

I've tried that, with the photos of the buildings. Maybe my expectations were too high and all I needed to do was resize my photos to get the sharpness that's synonymous with DSLRs?

gjl711 wrote in post #8577984
You can do the same by selecting a different shooting style or changing the parameters yourself. Bump the contrast, saturation and sharpness and you'll get that pop.

This is good. But you getter better results doing all post-processing in PS.

Your images look good. Just a little soft. Try shooting in RAW and sharpening in PS.

They look ok to me.

Me too, I don't see the problem.

I don't know what you guys were used to, but shots from my SLR look 100% better than a P&S straight out of camera without having to set ridiculous saturation or contrast levels.

I would bet 90% of the problem is not understating the importance of focus and DOF with an SLR - especially starting out with an f2.8 lens. ON a compact everything is pretty much always in focus. On an SLR you have the duty and privelege of controlling what is and is not in focus. For cityscapes, you should probably be using f8 and focus on something far away.

FWIW, they all look fine. The last one from the s3 looks better because compositionally it is a better photo and the lighting is more pleasing.

tkbslc wrote in post #8578071
On an SLR you have the duty and privelege of controlling what is and is not in focus. For cityscapes, you should probably be using f8 and focus on something far away.

FWIW, they all look fine. The last one from the s3 looks better because compositionally it is a better photo and the lighting is more pleasing.

That's what I can't wait to experiment with, the controlling. That being said, I'd love to master great photos with JPEG first, than master with post processing after. That's the part of me that always wants to get the basics and fundamentals right . Like you rightly put, I have to master the fundamentals.

The landscape was at 5.6. I was too excited with my new gear to even think properly about my aperture.

They look fine, instead of turning sharpness to 7 in the camera set it to whatever the default is and sharpen in post processing.

P&S tend to crank up saturation quite a bit so your eyes think the pictures are "sharp." It's kind of like increasing the clarity slide to 100% in LR.

Hm..

M&M pic looks like it could use some USM on it...and maybe a little extra DoF

Pic 2, looks like some haze is affecting the picture

3 and 4 to me should be recomposed to get the blown out sky out of the shot OR shot in HDR...

Universally, my advice is to get photoshop and shoot RAW, USM would clean them up a bit

Forgive me for editing without permission:

Applied a bit of USM, some slight curve adjustments, and adjustments to brightness/contrast