Originally posted by Larrymc Thanks Nicholas,
I realize the errors in my technique that's what I get for not paying attention to my settings. I was in manual mode and "chased the meter" to center it. Lesson learned. its obvious in the second photo I posted where the ISO was 200 and the Aperture value was f9 which is pretty close to what I should have used for the first shot.
M mode in great in complex conditions and for learning... but to me if the initial picture was not a pure test image, what you really need to concentrate on is
framing and composition first. Let the camera care of the detail like exposure and at worst force the parameter that you know is key. For example here you wanted deph of field so f/8 was a good choice of apperture and Av would have done the job.
To me it is only if people already find the picture quite interresting that secondary aspect like the level of noise can come into play...
Look at this one... The focus isn't that perfect. Also I added some grain on purpose in post processing. Still this is the picture that they prefered and we were many taking photo at the wedding and the picture won the price of the best photo. People judged the picture on other aspects and this picture won against much sharper and picture without a bit of grain in them !