zoom and focus??

[photopam]

Am I doing something wrong? Is something not clicking? Erg!

I took some pics yesterday, zoomed in at about 150mm, ap wide open (I think my lens goes to 4.5 at that distance) So I had to have a very high ISO to be able to shoot at 1/200s. Yucky pictures, they look so sad. I have the D300, so I thought that they would look better than that, but they are so soft, no detail. I shot some a while back that too, that looked soft, not soft focus, but soft in detail, or no detail and a little grainy when I was zoomed in at 200mm at 400 ISO. Can my lens not handle this distance? Or is it the distance?

I have the 18-200mm F/3.5-5.6 Nikkor lens, love the focusing on it at close distances, but to pull back and zoom in to get that great compression, it doesn't seem to do very well with... Or am I doing something wrong?

Does any of this make sense? (Sometimes I confuse myself...)

Thanks for any help!

photopam added 1 Minutes and 6 Seconds later...Double Post Merged Below

Moved to equipment talk. Sorry....

[MRCPix]

can you post an example? I have that camera and have used that lens on it at ISO 1600 and they were not lacking in any way.

[photopam]

Here;s a close up of one from last night. Did a little of processing in LR, but not much. Thanks for the help!

[photopam]

And here's the other one. ISO 400, F/5.6 @100s, lens at 170mm

[photopam]

Here's a better detail:
ISO 400, F 5.6@ 100s
Lens 82mm

[corralup]

Try a flash and lower ISO say 600. Your exposure wasn't right so yeah this is what happens.
Try this for me--
Manual Mode

1/800 second or 1/400 second
Aperture F4.5
ISO say 600
Exposure Bias +5
File size --largest you can make it in the camera not the computer
Then resize down later in your Photoshop or whatever you use.

If still dark use a flash.

Hope this helps.

Also practice on a tree trunk. And write down your settings on each shot.

[kenw]

The actual focus will change once you change the zoom amount (at least it does on most lenses). If you zoom in to focus and then zoom back out and take the pic without refocusing, you will get slightly out of focus results. The more you change the zoom amount, the more OOF it will be.

On shot #2, 1/100@ 170mm is flirting with hand shake blur but this is the sharpest of the bunch so I don't think that's an issue here (VR lens?)

[corralup]

The second one looks great but I see some noise in the 3rd. Ok, how much are you cropping because cropping can change pixels. I went through this what your going through. Are you shooting RAW or Jpeg?

[photopam]

Thanks Sandy,
I really try and avoid flash, looks too fake. I shoot Raw.
And for the second image, my ISO was 400, but still has very bad grain. I am thinking the problem is more with the zoom and less with the ISO in the second one.

I know the first one has ISO problems, and a flash would not have helped b/c I was far way, zoomed in. But it is what it was to get the right exposure.

My question is more of what to do about the image quality when zoomed into the subject.

photopam added 2 Minutes and 45 Seconds later...Double Post Merged Below

Originally Posted by corralup

The second one looks great but I see some noise in the 3rd. Ok, how much are you cropping because cropping can change pixels. I went through this what your going through.

That is pretty much how it looks at 100%. Not all my images look like that, just when I am farther away and zoomed in. The second one looks like the third one when at 100%. The 3rd one, they are much smaller in the frame, to give more of a sense of space.

Thanks!

photopam added 6 Minutes and 45 Seconds later...Double Post Merged Below

Originally Posted by kenw

The actual focus will change once you change the zoom amount (at least it does on most lenses). If you zoom in to focus and then zoom back out and take the pic without refocusing, you will get slightly out of focus results. The more you change the zoom amount, the more OOF it will be.

On shot #2, 1/100@ 170mm is flirting with hand shake blur but this is the sharpest of the bunch so I don't think that's an issue here (VR lens?)

Yes VR lens. I did not change focal length once zoomed and focused. Thanks for your help!

[MicWayWal]

I can't see any images.