terrible PQ

[ric1287]

so i would say at least half of my pictures turn out great, and the other half are terrible. The images are have "noise" i think its called. Anyone know what the deal is/ how to fix it?

camera - casio z75.

example pics:
Good Bad

is it bad lighting? Dunno what to do. Any help would be awesome.

 

[pontifex]

i don't know anything about that camera but are both shots in auto mode or manual?

i'm no expert but the "bad" shot looks like maybe the ISO is turned way up. that will produce noise like you see.

 

[Jawo]

It looks like the second one is slightly out of focus (OOF). Add to it the grainy-ness due to possible low lighting, and looks like the picture. CNet says the camera has "Disappointing image quality."

The first image the subject(s) are close and easy for the camera to focus. The second image is most likely OOF due to lots of action the auto focus doesnt know where to focus.

 

[tdawg]

If the camera has an 'Auto ISO' feature, turn it off so you can control ISO yourself. The most P&S digitals are notoriously bad at anything higher than the base ISO. Try setting your camera at a fixed 100 ISO to keep noise from creeping up.

Noise will also creep in if you try to correct the exposure too much to lighten an underexposed picture.

 

[Ika]

The main problem with P&S cameras is lighting. If there's lots of lighting, the Auto mode will detect it and turn up the shutter speed and turn down the ISO, so you will see crisp, relatively noise-free pictures. If the lighting is not so abundant, however, the Auto on the camera will turn down the shutter speed (making for blurry photos if you so much as twitch your hand) and turn up the ISO, resulting in the noise you see in the "bad" picture.

Then again, I'm not a total expert on cameras in the first place, but I'm pretty sure what I said is accurate...

 

[ric1287]

so if i set the ISO at 100 instead of auto, will it do low light pics justice? Or will it mess up the pics that actually turn out good too?

 

[ric1287]

so if i set the ISO at 100 instead of auto, will it do low light pics justice? Or will it mess up the pics that actually turn out good too?

 

[tdawg]

Aflac was kind of correct.

In poor lighting with "Auto ISO" active, the camera will use that as part of it's exposure measurement and increase the ISO to a point that the shutter speed will still be somewhat acceptable (there's a limit to what the camera is capable of before it just can't expose an image in low-enough lighting). You shouldn't see blurry photos, but you will see increasingly noisy photos.

If you set ISO to 100, you take that out of the camera's metering measurements and force it to adjust shutter speed and aperture (also known as f-stop and is displayed on the front lens ring as f2.8-6.3, etc, whatever your camera is capable of. The lower the f-stop, the more light gets thru the lens).

For most P&S cameras, it is best to set a fixed ISO, such as you are considering setting at 100, and then utilize the built-in flash to compensate for low light. Using flash will allow the camera to use a faster shutter speed, thus reducing blurry images from hand/camera shake. This is only feasable in close-in situations such as close-range people shots, party pictures, etc, as the built in flash is not powerful enough to light up an entire outdoor scene, for example.

You will find times where you may need to increase the ISO since it may mean getting a noisier picture versus getting no picture at all.