Is my refurbished D50 defective?

[psilver]

The first refurbished D50 I got from Cameta had a defective flash so they replaced it the same day. The second one had 800 actuations but was working fine as far as I know.

I have taken a lot of pictures with it already since I got it a few weeks ago but there is this lingering doubt in my mind that there is something wrong with what I got.

I have three lenses now, the kit 18-55mm, Tamron 70-300mm and a 50mm f1.8 which I bought yesterday.

The photos are all soft as shown below. I was hoping the 50mm prime would be sharper but I'm just not satisfied.

These were taken as RAW then converted with Adobe software. No modifications were done but resized to about 800 pixels, 72dpi.

The mouse was focused dead-on but still came out unfocused. IT WAS MOUNTED ON A TRIPOD.

Please let me know if I should return the unit or if that is normal which I would accept.

Click on thumbnails...










Thanks for all the help.

[oldcsar]

your exposure time for the mouse is only 1/10th of a second. I don't own a D50, but it's possible that some mirror slap is interfering with sharpness at this shutter speed. Try going into full manual, and picking either a much faster or slower shutter speed. If your camera has mirror lockup, enable that, and use a timed shutter release so that you can also rule out your hand from causing any camera shake. There's also the possibility that with such a fast aperture (the exif says f/2.2), your focus isn't quite as accurate as you think it is (unless you're 100 percent sure... try taking a photo of a ruler to see if any point of it is sharp, or how off it is). This is especially possible with the tiny, dim viewfinders of many cheaper DSLRs.

[psilver]

I think I found the solution and it's a classic newbie error...

I forgot all about the ISO! I didn't test the mouse yet but indoor low light portrait has vastly improved when I bumped the ISO to 400-1600. I didn't touch that much ever since I forgot to change it back to 200 during daytime shots last week, making my photos grainy.

Thanks for the reply. I'm 90% sure it's the operator not the machinery.

[BernardLanguillier]

Another comment, it could be a slight AF issue also.

Try focussing manually when doing such tests also.

Regards,
Bernard

[psilver]

Another comment, it could be a slight AF issue also.

Try focussing manually when doing such tests also.

Regards,
Bernard
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It's okay now. Another factor was I was using RAW. JPEG applies sharpening but not RAW. ISO really is the main culprit in my photos which was mostly taken at night or indoors.

I'm satisfied with my photos now.   Thanks for all your help.