Grainy pictures in low light concern

hi there,

I just got the f707 and I think is great. The only thing that is bothering , is that some of the pictures look grainy when taken indoors and in low light (with flash). Here is an example: the settings were in automatic. this is a max resolution crop. Is there something wrong with my camera?

http://www.pbase.com/image/1418222

PS: the info in this forum is awesome!!!

--Frederick

Hi Frederick,

I think you did the same thing that I did right after I took mine out of the box. If you notice in the zoom bar/indicator, there is a vertical line about 3/4 of the way. That bar indicates when you go into digital zoom. You will experience considerably more noise when using dig zoom, especially in low light. I would also make sure that you are in Fine rather tha Standard mode.

You should not typically see that kind of noise with a flash shot.

hope this helps,

Jim

Frederick said:

hi there,

I just got the f707 and I think is great. The only thing that is
bothering , is that some of the pictures look grainy when taken
indoors and in low light (with flash). Here is an example: the
settings were in automatic. this is a max resolution crop. Is there
something wrong with my camera?

http://www.pbase.com/image/1418222

PS: the info in this forum is awesome!!!

--
Frederick

Click to expand...

--Jim Fuglestad http://www.pbase.com/jfuglestad/galleries

Two reasons off the top of my head. I looked at the EXIF header and the ISO is 400. Change ISO from 'Auto' to '100'. Secondly, the flash may have been too low, try changing to 'high'. Since this is a crop, I can't tell the composition - that may also be an issue. That should give you a better exposed photo.

Matt

Frederick said:

hi there,

I just got the f707 and I think is great. The only thing that is
bothering , is that some of the pictures look grainy when taken
indoors and in low light (with flash). Here is an example: the
settings were in automatic. this is a max resolution crop. Is there
something wrong with my camera?

http://www.pbase.com/image/1418222

PS: the info in this forum is awesome!!!

--
Frederick

Click to expand...

I don't think he was using digital zoom. The EXIF shows 17mm, which is still fairly wide angle (10 to 48mm).

Matt

Shutter said:

I think you did the same thing that I did right after I took mine
out of the box. If you notice in the zoom bar/indicator, there is
a vertical line about 3/4 of the way. That bar indicates when you
go into digital zoom. You will experience considerably more noise
when using dig zoom, especially in low light. I would also make
sure that you are in Fine rather tha Standard mode.

You should not typically see that kind of noise with a flash shot.

hope this helps,

Jim

Frederick said:

hi there,

I just got the f707 and I think is great. The only thing that is
bothering , is that some of the pictures look grainy when taken
indoors and in low light (with flash). Here is an example: the
settings were in automatic. this is a max resolution crop. Is there
something wrong with my camera?

http://www.pbase.com/image/1418222

PS: the info in this forum is awesome!!!

--
Frederick

Click to expand...

--
Jim Fuglestad
http://www.pbase.com/jfuglestad/galleries

Click to expand...

Matt:

I changed the ISO to Auto and the flash to high in similar composition, regular size room with low lights. The difference is tremendous. (This picture is in max. full res cropped)

http://www.pbase.com/image/1418565/original

so I guess lighting is key!! (I'm glad nothing is wrong with my f707
In what instance should I use the ISO 400 then?

Thank you for your help
Frederick

Matthew Nelson said:

Two reasons off the top of my head. I looked at the EXIF header
and the ISO is 400. Change ISO from 'Auto' to '100'. Secondly,
the flash may have been too low, try changing to 'high'. Since
this is a crop, I can't tell the composition - that may also be an
issue. That should give you a better exposed photo.

Matt

Click to expand...

--Frederick

Frederick said:

In what instance should I use the ISO 400 then?

Click to expand...

Use it when a noisy picture is preferable to no picture at all or to a blurred picture. There is software about that claims to be able to remove noise from digital photos... so there is some hope that the quality of the picture could be improved by post processing.

Hello

I seem to have the same problem. Admitted, this picture was taken with digital zoom, is that the cause ?

Here is the example:

http://www.pbase.com/madpiano/test_pictures

Thanks
Sabine

This is exactly the problem I was having. I believe it is due to ISO 400, which is what I was using too. Now I'm thinking instead of ISO 400 for action, to use a faster shutter speed so you don't get the noise. I'm novice too, somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

Frederick said:

hi there,

I just got the f707 and I think is great. The only thing that is
bothering , is that some of the pictures look grainy when taken
indoors and in low light (with flash). Here is an example: the
settings were in automatic. this is a max resolution crop. Is there
something wrong with my camera?

http://www.pbase.com/image/1418222

PS: the info in this forum is awesome!!!

--
Frederick

Click to expand...

Frederick said:

Matt:

I changed the ISO to Auto and the flash to high in similar
composition, regular size room with low lights. The difference is
tremendous. (This picture is in max. full res cropped)

http://www.pbase.com/image/1418565/original

so I guess lighting is key!! (I'm glad nothing is wrong with my
f707
In what instance should I use the ISO 400 then?

Thank you for your help
Frederick

Click to expand...

I use it only when I have to or get no picture. In general the higher the ISO the more noise will be apparent. I do a lot of shooting in very dim conditions(theater). Recently I had to shoot using 400 ISO and full digital zoom as I wasn't going to have time to post process(crop etc.) they were for the lobby display and other promo stuff the next day. I was shooting from way up in the lighting booth(and running lights at the same time). And of course there was a lot of noise, the digital zoom amplifies that as well. On printing w/o post processing to relatively small sizes (4x6) a lot of the noise just isn't apparent. They turned out remarkably good in fact.

There are various tools that can help clean noise. Neat Image is one. Though it can be a little aggressive and takes a little getting use to it can do a really good job albeit a slow one.

http://www.neatimage.com
--Anorfir

Kim, one reason that one uses ISO 400 for action is that you need less light for the high ISO so you are able to go to a faster shutter speed. You could also use the high ISO in order to stop down to get more DOF or a combination of faster shutter and more DOF. If you can get the stop action and DOF you want without the higher ISO then do it by all means. In general, shutter speed doesn't affect noise greatly unless you go to quite long shutter times (noise increases approximately as the square root of the shutter time because it is a summation of many small random effects.) In the case of long shutter times you are taking photos in low light conditions and so the noise contribution to the pixel values is a higher percentage of the final numbers. Some cameras have special noise reduction processes that kick in when the shutter times get long, because of this effect.

Kimberly said:

Frederick said:

hi there,

I just got the f707 and I think is great. The only thing that is
bothering , is that some of the pictures look grainy when taken
indoors and in low light (with flash). Here is an example: the
settings were in automatic. this is a max resolution crop. Is there
something wrong with my camera?

http://www.pbase.com/image/1418222

PS: the info in this forum is awesome!!!

--
Frederick

Click to expand...

Click to expand...