[StephenBatey]

To my eyes, your problem isn't with the settings, the camera or the lens. It's your approach.

You said that you didn't use a tripod. That is your first big mistake. A tripod should make you think about what you're photographing, and take care about it. Your first photograph (if I've correctly interpreted what you wanted and why you took it) failed spectacularly because of a host of small details that you should have noticed.

I'll add a big caveat. I wouldn't have thought anyone could be so dim, but I am assured that many photographers, when they deign to use a tripod, plonk it down and shoot from the spot where it landed. Your camera position is the biggest change of setting you can make, and the most important. Get that wrong, and there's nothing you can do afterwards. Yes, you can make a satin purse (never a silk one) from a sow's ear with Photoshop, but it will always be second best. Put the camera on a tripod, and then walk around and find where to set it up. If it takes you half an hour to find that spot, so what? I've taken that long over it.

I know that technical solutions are nearly always the preferred ones, because they're the easy ones. My suggestion is harder. Sorry to be blunt, but from experience if I soften the message it rarely gets through.