What am I doing wrong?

I have this problem a few times lately and I wonder what I am doing wrong? This photo was taken on a cloudy day and so I used an ISO of 400, and it did come out with some noise. My subject looks out of focus and just way too soft (the red focus button was on her face anyway). This was with the kit lens (18-55mm), which tends to be soft. However I am sometimes having this issue with my photos with my nifty fifty (although that was when taking pictures in a basement suite, where the lighting was really poor.... so that may be it?). If I am doing something obviously wrong to get photos of such bad quality please tell me what it is. I am wondering if I am handling low lighting situations wrong. I had my external flash in the hotshoe, but the subject was too far away for it to be effective here.

This is full size:

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HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Byte size: ZERO | PHOTOBUCKET ERROR IMAGE

A couple of things come to mind here, first I wonder what your shutter speed is here and whether you are hand-holding or tripoding this. Another factor of softness is the kind of light. By the looks it seems like a fairly heavy overcast, this can add to the appearance of a less contrasty more soft look. Overall by just looking at the full size image, it doesn't look too bad to me. It's when we pixel peep that we get way too critical of our results. From the lighting I see, lack of flash, and kit lens it could just be that this is what you're gonna get no matter what. You can tweak this in post processing.

My shutter speed was 1/200 handheld. It was not a bright day, that is why I was wondering if it was a lighting issue and my not understanding how to handle lighting (maybe I should have used ISO of 200 and slowed the shutter speed abit for less noise). At 400 ISO, I wasn't happy with the noise in my pictures this day, at 1/200 I was not happy with the soft out of focus look. I was so frustrated after shooting this day.

With that nice soft light you might want to add some contrast.

That is a good idea. I am going to try that. Thanks for that tip.

Could this also be the issue with my 50mm (1. 8 )? I took some pics in a basement suite of the kids on Halloween night, after dark, and the photos were disappointingly soft for such a sharp lens....

What was your shutter speed? Did you use flash?

My shutter speed was 1/200. I had my external flash on, but I am pretty sure it didn't reach that far and fell short of my subject.

looks fine to me... some PP would strengthen it up a bit...

Do you mean the pop up flash? Or did you have a speedlight attached?

I'm not sure of the noise handling of the XS or the sensor size but both are probably coming into play here. (The first image looks pretty good to me). Noise will make an image appear soft but generally isn't a concern if you can get proper exposure in the camera.


I also found my kit lens didn't start getting sharp until about f6.3. It's not a stellar performer in low light and I quickly replaced it with a Tamron 28-75/2.8.

Processing may be able to pull some more out of the images but I don't think you are doing anything terribly wrong. You did shoot in raw, didn't you?

This is a common problem with the Rebel Line. I sold mine and replaced it with a Nikon D40 with excellent results. My 5D and 5DMKII never had this problem, but XSI was the pits. Good luck with it.

I used external flash.

This is the exact lens that I have my eye on. How do you find image quality? Is it slow to focus (e.g. focus and snap that picture of my kid sliding down a slide at a playground before its too late)?

Yes, I shot RAW. I think that part of my problem is that my LCD lens was set too bright and so the pictures were more underexposed than I realized on the sight. Once on my computer I had to take the RAW image and step the contrast up abit, which may have added to the existing noise level?

Your lens should be sharper than that. Maybe you have a bad one. Have you ever run a sharpness test?

Good!

BAD! Don't use the LCD for exposure unless the part that you're looking at is just the histogram, & even that can fool you. Since you're already shooting in manual, read this: Need an exposure crutch?