Go back and read your posts to me vs. posts other people have made. In addition to your suggestions, there have been several comments like "If you would get this into your head" and a few other things that support the idea that you're berating me. I'm fully willing to accept constructive criticism and fully admitting that setting the camera on P and using picasa isn't the path to great photography, but I don't need the commentary on whether or not I'm thickheaded. And I'm reading everything you're saying and researching it. I'm sure there must be 80 million people that post the same typical problems and questions over and over again, and it must get tiresome for you and people blaming their lens or camera must be a pet peeve. But when you're feeling aggrieved by them, maybe take a break and let someone else do the helping for a while instead of letting it come through in the tone of your reponses.
If I was absolutely convinced that this was the lens and absolutely blaming the lens, it'd have been sent back to amazon on Thursday, the day after I took the pics and I wouldn't have posted this thread. Which is why I'm not entirely sure why I keep being accused of refusing to consider that it's not the lens that is bad or assuming that it is. Because really, while it's cheaper for me to return the lens, the WR features of the lens would make it a lot easier and I'd be far less worried about taking my camera out on the water... Now I have judgement calls about is this shot actually worth having to buy a new camera body if I flip or drop the camera? Now, quite possibly if I flip the kayak with a WR lens, it'd still ruin the camera, but I'm gonna pretend it's less of a risk. I have it tethered to my pfd when it's out, so it's just gotta be okay the 10 seconds or however long it takes me to roll back up.
When you go out on a photo shoot, how do you select which lenses you take? Do you grab such and such lens, because in the past, it's done better with low light? Or some other lens, because it does a nice job at bright lights? I'm assuming alot of your decisions on which lens you're using is what has worked well in the past and not necessarily a direct comparison of all the lenses. Use lenses for a while and you get an idea of when they shine, when they struggle, when whatever. So instead of assuming that I have absolutely no idea about any of my lenses & their performance in various conditions, how about assuming that I have used my camera before?
I can of course continue to show you 80 million pics that I've taken in a kayak and hope that eventually one of them will convince you that I actually have taken photos from a kayak before fairly regularly with various lenses in all different sets of conditions and that I might have some sense of what my lenses can do. Or if you're really bored, you can root through my picasaweb - I'd probably advise you not to bother, 'cause most of the time it bores me looking through it.
I posted cave pics, because you asked if I've ever used the other lenses in a kayak, as an example of low light, movement in the boat, and being able to get pics that had enough detail, freezing motion, etc... If with the rest of my lenses, I can shoot in far worse conditions than what I was out in the other day and get acceptable results, a lens that I can't get a good pic on a bright sunny day to me is suspect. And yes, there are probably some settings that I could change on the camera to force it to take a better picture... And when I walk around with my camera, I look at the image playback, check the highlights/shadows, histograms, etc., and I adjust my exposure for that to improve it and I put it on manual focus, and blah blah blah. And when I'm in a kayak, I don't, because I usually don't have that luxury. I shoot on P. I'm fully willing to accept that, okay, for this lens, it's happier on -2 on Tav mode instead of P at 0. But it's just gonna sit at that setting instead of me constantly changing it. So I'll look into the setting changes on P mode that Skog suggested.
You guys also have to realize that I took 600+ photos with that lens that day. Most of them were far worse than what I posted on here. What I posted on here, I took out of the reasonably good pics. So when you tell me that they aren't that bad, I'm still considering all the other far worse ones that I took. So when I
say that I consider the pics horrible, I'm taking in account that there's another 400-500 pics that are horrible.
I didn't have time to post all the exif data yet, but looking back at the pics the 18-135 wr took that day, it was usually ISO 200, sometimes Iso 400. When looking at all the pics of moving birds, aperature varied between f5.6, 10, & 18. Exposure times were between 1/200 secs & 1/1500 of a sec for moving birds, most around 1/500.
Looking at the 80-320 bright sunny day pics of people in kayaks, I posted here, iso was 200-400, usually aperature around 5.6, and exposure times were between 1/200 and 1/2000 of a second. I went back to some pics I took with that lens out on the water on an overcast misty morning and exposure times were about 1/320 with motion stopped and an in focus image. The 80-320 is far longer than the 18-135 and probably similar in weight (i can weigh them later), so I don't think weight of the lens is that much of an issue - but maybe I had too much caffeine that morning and had shaky hands.
Right now, I think the easiest/laziest way for me to test the camera out on the water is to go through the diff modes that Skog/Clinton/and everyone else suggested, and tell the camera to auto bracket and see whether I like some of those shots, and then get more meticulous to dial it in. I can switch back and forth between a couple lenses on the water, but want to limit that to a certain extent. if after all that, I'm still not convinced of the lens - I can try the tripod thing. Or I can just exchange it and see if I'm happier with another copy of it.
