Amen to all of the points above, especially #2 and #4.
I have read about, (and done some experiments on my own with) raising the exposure in LR versus raising the ISO in-camera, and in my experience there’s not even a detectable difference! (I didn’t want to believe it at first, but after seeing the results with my own eyes, I decided that I should quit worrying about it.) Of course it depends on the camera and software; some cameras compress the RAW files, so you would want to be more careful there, but I would not be too worried about pushing a RAW file in LR.
Obviously you should still strive for accurate exposure in the first place. For one thing, it’ll be less work in post-processing!
I think the problem in this case was a combination of underexposure and the WB being a little wacky, rather than the lens being bad. They’re not the sharpest pictures, but they’re not bad at all, considering the lighting and the lens being used. Those cheapo telephoto lenses are notorious in low-light…
Our eyes are incredible, and God made them to automatically adjust to color temperature changes, so it can be a little tricky at first to spot and correct white balance issues. Something I’ve trained myself to do is this: Look at something in the picture that is supposed to be white. What color is it? Is it bluish? Is it reddish? Is it yellowish? When I’ve adjusted the WB so that the white is true white, then I know it’s pretty close to what it should be.
Lightroom can do this automatically with the White Balance Selector tool.
Just click on it, then click on an area that is supposed to be white or neutral gray, and it will adjust the WB to make it that way. Often the adjustment seems WAY too drastic, but if you look at it for a while, and allow your eyes to adjust to it, you’ll find that it’s usually a great improvement.
P.S. Take a look at that histogram in the screenshot. (It’s the one from this photo.) That’s what happens when you edit a highly compressed JPG file. 🙂 I pushed this photo to the equivalent of about ISO 6400!
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