ok, here is an example of me getting it wrong.
To me it is 1) not sharp, 2)flat.
You can be as mean as you like about it as it was an image that was tossed out. But it shows how bad I am at the moment.
And some very sound advice there for me already. Will take a look at that link, it can't hurt to read a bit more, I need al the help I can get
The problem here is the light. It looks like it was a lightly overcast day. The shadows are weak and and soft edged. Nothing in the scene is even approaching deep black. The whole image lacks contrast. The sky looks like it is blown out, or at least drab and colourless. The predominant colours in the scene are either grey stone or green grass/leaves. The white balance is not very complementary to the scene, given the overcast light.
Here is the histogram for your file....
Note the peak on the right, indicating the blown out sky, while there is a large gap on the left, indicating that there are no really dark pixels anywhere in the image - no shadows. In this example, I don't think the blown sky is a terrible sin because your exposure has at least allowed you to capture reasonable detail in the mid tones.
As for sharpness, increased contrast enhances the perception of sharpness, by making more strongly defined boundaries between light and dark areas. Since the lighting for this scene is so flat and lifeless it will look somewhat soft, no matter how sharp your lens or how accurate your focus. Really you need better light to cheer up the scene, or some jiggery pokery in editing to enhance it. Here's a quick effort in Lightroom....
Changes I've made are....
- Warm it up by adjusting the white balance;
- Adjust the black point to darken the shadow areas;
- Increase contrast;
- Increase clarity;
- Increase vibrance.
Whether or not you used GB mode, P, Av, Tv or M would have made no difference to this scene. Although the sky is blown in the background the rest of the scene is fairly well exposed. The two biggest changes you could have made in camera would have been - set the white balance correctly (or creatively!) and bump up the contrast and perhaps the saturation.
The problem with this approach is that you might need to keep fiddling with these things with every change of scene or light. The better approach, in my opinion, would be to shoot RAW instead of JPEG and then you would have the luxury of time to fine tune these things, and more, after you'd taken the shot and without harming IQ in any way. Thus, if you want to take the easy path to higher quality at least shoot in P mode and set your file type to RAW, or RAW+JPEG if you are worried that raw is not for you. The thing is, with many (all) adjustments, it is better to have a raw file to work with than a JPEG.
EDIT : By the way, some might consider it "cheating" to fiddle with the image file after you've taken the shot. Well in my mind there is no difference between tweaking contrast in your editing software rather than adjusting it in camera to begin with . The advantage with shooting in RAW and leaving the editing till later is that you can fine tune such adjustments to perfection, watching the effects both on screen and in your histogram, rather than accepting whatever limited options the camera offers you.
If you shoot RAW, the only things you must try to get right in camera are exposure and focus, and to a lesser degree, composition. Everything else (white balance, levels/curves, sharpening, noise reduction, saturation) can wait till later. Of course, ideally you want good lighting in the first place, but it is not a function of camera settings to overcome poor light quality.
). After a lots of reading on this forum, I switched to AV mode, so all I had to do was think about DoF and the camera would go the rest.
Will take a look at the links, hopefully they will give me a bit more of an idea of what I am looking at.
