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Noisy Pics and Aperture Question

Kolwala

New member
Location
N Houston
Why is it that my photos are coming out noisy? I shoot with a D60 and the lens it came with. I almost never use a tripod, and the ISO is at 100? I do shoot in manual mode. Also my other question was why can I not get the background and foreground to be blurry? Aperture is like as open as it can be. Any help would be appreciated. :smile:

Noisy photo with non blurred back/foreground:


New Lip by Kolwala, on Flickr

Sorry for the long post.
 

rinzorz619

Ready to race!
Location
San Diego
I'm barely learning about photography, but I'll take a stab at it. Judging by the info, the aperture was as big as you can get, which was at f/5.6 since you shot it at the farthest focal length possible. I think you will need to get a much lower aperture number if you would like the blur background. As a result, you'd need to consider the distances your subject and background are? I'm guessing you would like something similar to this but with cars? This one was shot at f/1.8 with a 50mm prime:


Untitled by rinzorz619, on Flickr
 

PRND[S]

The Lame & The Ludicrous
Location
Southern California
Car(s)
'15 LSG Golf R
A lower ISO normally means less noise, but not when it requires the exposure time to get bumped up significantly. The longer the exposure, the more the sensor will heat up and produce noise. On the D60 I would try increasing the ISO to 400.

As far as the aperture is concerned, if you are talking about a zoom lens, most aren't constant aperture, i.e. the more you zoom in, the smaller the maximum aperture becomes. A typical zoom lens may be F2.8-5.6, meaning it is F2.8 at the wide end, and F5.6 when fully zoomed. Isolating the background from the subject requires a large aperture, distance between the subject and background, or both.
 

PRND[S]

The Lame & The Ludicrous
Location
Southern California
Car(s)
'15 LSG Golf R
If the maximum aperture is F3.5 you probably have an inexpensive kit lens that came bundled with the camera, it will keep too much of the foreground and background in focus.

Use this DOF calculator to explore the relationship between focal length, F stop and distance to the subject. The lower the total DOF, the easier it will be to isolate the subject and get the rest of the scene out of focus.
 

motorhoney

Ready to race!
Location
MN
OP, to get any kind of "blurred background" with your kit lens, you'll need to shoot at the longest focal length ("zoomed in"), up as close as you can get and with the largest aperture, which would be f/5.6 It doesn't matter what mode you use - aperture is aperture. Your photo is cropped much too "loose" to get the background out of focus, especially with that lens. Fill the frame with the car and park further from the trees - you should be able to get a little of the effect with your lens if you do that.

I don't see any noise in your "large" flickr photo - make sure you're exposing nice and bright and not pushing the exposure later in editing software.

Try doing a shot like this:


Untitled by Erik Lauritsen, on Flickr

This is with an even "longer" focal length lens, at an even larger aperture, on a larger format camera. You won't get background blur like that with what you've got, but you'll see SOMETHING :)

As a rule, to get "blur", you want to
A: Fill the frame with the subject (get close)
B: Use a longer focal length lens
C: Use a larger aperture (lower f/stop number)

Peek through my, or any other user's, Flickr and look at the EXIF data. You'll eventually figure out that you need better/more expensive lenses to get "that look"

Also, a bit more of a "technique" matter - all but ONE of your photos have your car in the dead-fucking center. This can get old :) Try using your center AF point, getting focus, and then re-composing (without moving closer/further from the subject, as this will throw off your focus...) to put things towards the edges of the frame.

Finally, another "trick" you could try doing - if your camera has live view, enable it. Manually focus the lens back and forth, after composing using the above tips, and set it so that the care is JUST on the edge of being in focus, closer to the minimum distance and further from infinity. Your kit lens likely doesn't have markings on the lens to indicate which is which, but you'll see as you move the focus ring around - watch the background go in/out of focus and adjust it carefully until the care is JUST beginning to be in focus. This is a pretty lousy way to do shit, and I don't think anyone would go through the trouble... and it's probably not even that effective... but it's another thing to try.
 
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Kolwala

New member
Location
N Houston
Thanks everyone for the help it's greatly appreciated. I will try some of these out and post them in my photo thread. Great pics btw^
 

njfast07

Go Kart Champion
Location
Central Jersey
Motorhoney's suggestions are the best option you have with the equipment you're working with.

If you're really interested in getting some good bokeh, and an awesome lens in the process, go out and drop a measly 100-150 bucks on a nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens. It is without a doubt the most bang for your buck piece of Nikon equipment I own, and you will LOVE it.
 
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