Did you try following with a finer polish? What you posted looks like micro-marring. I'd follow it with Meguiar's 205 or SwirlX and a finishing pad on speed 5 and it should clean it right up.
Matt's right.
Your process isn't just the first step, it's all the steps.
You do the first step to see if you can remove the defects, like swirls and scratches. If you're lucky, your car has "polishable" or workable" paint and it comes out looking beautiful after the first cutting or correction step.
If you're unlucky, you see micro-marring, or hazing like shown in your picture. This is the tick-marks or scratches that as Dana pointed out, look so uniform in the paint. They are caused by,
- The oscillating action of a DA Polisher
- The foam formula
- The abrasives
After you find a way to remove the defects you're trying to remove initially, then all you have to do is find a way to remove the tick-marks or micro-marring with a secondary step.
People have a tendency to forget where they started from and that's usually a swirled-out, scratched up paint job. They reduce all the major defects down to jut the micro-marring and from there continue with the process and remove the micro-marring.
This is where it would be nice if paint companies made paints that polished well to start with, but you get what you get, whether it's from the factory or in this case from a body shop.
It's good to see you started out doing some testing first before going over the entire car. Any members or lurkers reading this take note. This is why it's so important to do a "Test Spot" first and dial in a process that makes the paint look GREAT and then duplicate the process over the rest of the car.
If you can't make one small section look great you certainly don't want to be buffing out the rest of the car with the process that's not working on your car's paint system.
The test spot is a process too, not just the application of a single product.
As for how much product to apply to the face of your pad, after initial break-in, you can cut down on the amount of product you apply, for example, just a single line of product or a half circle, or some guys like to use dots or spots of product.
You have to vary this by what you find it's taking to correct your paint. Paint in really bad condition might require more product and even a second application to the same section. Paint that polishes well and is in good condition might not take as much product and fewer passes to correct.
Each paint system on different cars will react differently, this is why it's so important to test first, the buff out the entire car.
