I agree that handheld at 1/40sec with the 150mm lens is not a good idea. But here's the thing. And please feel free to let me have it with both barrels here because it may just be my mind playing tricks with me.
I made this image in RAW format. Initially it was imported in Lightroom where I made some adjustments and then exported it to Photoshop where I resized, sharpened using USM and ran it through Neat Image for a little noise reduction. At that point it gets sent back to Lightroom as a TIFF file.
At this point (TIFF file) the image looks much better to me. The colors looks much better. The image looks much sharper and so on. Then I convert it to a JPEG for uploading on the forum and it seems to lose some vibrancy and sharpness.
Is there something I am doing wrong at that last step of conversion to JPEG? It may not have been perfect but this image seemed sharper around the hairs at center of the flower for example in the TIFF. I recognize that all you folks have to get your images into a JPEG for posting and they look great.
So yes, I take your advice regarding a tripod (which I had with me just didn't choose to use) or kicking up the ISO, but I am also wondering if I am doing something in JPEG conversion that is also causing problems.
Maybe this should be moved to another forum. If so, feel free to move it.
1/40 isnt really the problem if the flash is set up properly, you can shoot 1/30 or even 1/15 depending on the ambient light. The flash really should be the only light source making the image sharp. The only problem you have shooting at 1/40 is if the ambient is too high you will get ghosting.
Ed if you are processing the image for web just extract the jpeg from the raw file, it only takes half a second and will be true to the image on the cameras LCD screen plus you will save the 20 processing steps. I wouldnt recommend wasting too much time on unnessesary steps. I extract the jpeg from a raw file, run curves, crop and resize, sharpen. 4 steps in less than 10 seconds.
This is the workflow from my yellow flower post : http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ad.php?t=10942
Of course running a 105 step workflow might give you a better image but for web posting, simple is better.