Peace Strikes A Chord

This is a close up of the newly unveiled John Lennon Peace Memorial in Liverpool's Chavasse Park.

I did some street shooting today, partly to try to get something good for the Street Photography Now Project, and partly to test out pushing the ISO past 400 in daylight in the hope of being able to shoot with a narrow aperture and get a sharp image back to front. It failed. I shot 3 rolls' worth of shots, and got about 10 vaguely usable images. And that included having to do some b&w converts. I hate the noise, I just hate the noise.

A fellow photog on flickr used to have a Nikon D40 - best go and check his shots to compare to mine. I'm convinced he didn't get the ridiculous amounts of noise I'm getting on his narrow aperture shots, and I can't figure out what I need to change to achieve that just now. Makes me wish I had a better camera, tho the truth is probably more simple and user-oriented.