Hi! I’m new to 3D in general but picked up Blender a few weeks ago and can’t put it down! I’m new to this community too, so hello from Birmingham, England 
Does anyone have any general tips for a newbie such as myself? (favourite tutorial sites welcome)
Below is my best attempt so far to render a scene, and I was just wondering if anyone had any tips for adding realism (apologies for any shockingly obvious rookie errors).
Thanks in advance!
your modelling looks great 
I think you need to texture your egg though, it looks very clean and pale. Eggs usually have speckles and imperfections.
Take a look at this reference photo to see what i mean -
Notice the white and brown spots scattered accross the shells
this scene looks awesome,great sites for blender that i know of is blender cookie and blender guru
Advice on realism in general… Get a butt-load of reference photos for everything in your scene. That way you can get a solid grasp on the textures on them, the way they reflect light, etc. Off the top of my head (check my advice off of references of course): The jar of jam??? in the background looks like it is reflecting way too much of the scene and too cleanly. I think it would be better if it was a bit more transparent, so we could see inside of it, and just had a bit less reflection.
That said, this looks excellent for someone having only used Blender for a little while. Normally such images would be a horribly lit mess with not textures and only the most basic materials. Nice work!
P.S. I know you didn’t ask about composition, but this image feel weighted too much to the right, too unbalanced. That’s just my opinion – take it or leave it.
Very good work.
The egg needs a bit of work, as mentioned above. Also, the DOF seems to be a bit over the top. The spot in sharp focus appears to be the patch of tablecloth between the glass of orange juice and the plate in the foreground. DOF is generally used to let the viewer see some particular thing among a welter of things. You certainly have the welter, but it’s unclear what we should be focussing on.
The utensil on the foreground plate appears to be ceramic rather than metal. I can’t tell if this is intentional or not.
Welcome to BlenderArtists 
Thanks for the comments and kind words 
Jamie B - the egg definitely looks too pale compared to that image you posted, thanks for the reference!
ciril00 - cheers for the links, will bookmark them
hartj57 - thanks for the encouragement and advice - i hear you on the over-the-top reflections and the composition. I’m still trying to get my head around Index of Refraction and the mix shader node, so have been having a bit of a play with those to get the materials more life-like. Index of refraction is a tricky one isn’t it. I think I’ll start keeping a bank of reference images too.
Orinoco - I agree, maybe the Depth of Field is a little too dramatic in that version (subtlety could be the key). I might try shifting the focus to be object-related rather than entering a distance measurement.
Here’s my latest version - I’ve been experimenting with sub-surface scattering, and I think the orange juice is working a lot better as a result, a lot less flat. I haven’t looked at the composition yet but I might shift that around next. Cheers all!
As an additional note - annoyingly, the drinking glass material was ruining the subsurface scattering of the orange juice so I had to remove all of the drinking glass’s shadows using the following node arrangement which borrows from a tutorial online (for the ‘Light Path’ node which I still don’t quite understand). The problem is, it takes away the darkness under the glass and the shadow on the table. Does anyone know a way of removing the glass’s shadow effect on the orange juice, but keeping its shadow for the table surface?
The light path node allows you to alter the way a material is path traced when rendered, i.e removing shadows, removing glossy/diffuse etc. heres a link that explains it better - http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/Nodes/More#Light_Path
Heres a link explaining the role of light paths - http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/Light_Paths
To tone down the reflections in your glass, your best of mixing a refraction node with a glossy node. that way you can control the amount of reflection your glass material has. the darkness of the transparent node controls the strength of the glasses shadow. i’ve attached an image of the node setup for you.
Also, using a colur ramp is a much more effective method of controling material displacement strength.
Replace the colour mix node with a colour ramp. if you change the black colour on the ramp closer to a white colour, it weakens the effect of the displacement. Also, change the image to non-colour data.
i’ve attached another image to show you
Cheers for the advice Jamie (very kind of you to post pics too!)
