Deffective camera? lens? bad photographer or what?

Sony 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 E-mount

12/12/2003 09:44:03 PM · #1

I read somewhere that my camera (DSC-V1), not the best that money can get but good enough, is supposed to have a fairly low noise level in it's price range and i'm not sure if that noise level is normal. For me it seems to be very high.

Note that none of these pictures have been resized, thay just have been crop to 640x480

Also, a camera with the focus set to infinity is supposed to get a clear focus from a certain point to infinity... it seems in that photo that my foreground is clear but my background is maybe too soft...

Need advice before to get my camera to the technician...

Thanks

Message edited by author 2003-12-12 21:44:49.

jmsetzler

Sony Alpha a6000

12/12/2003 09:51:38 PM · #2

were you using digital zoom? The images seem underexposed as well. That contributes to noise.

Havok

12/12/2003 10:01:04 PM · #3

That's how my pictures used to come out when I used the digital zoom, it's better if you turn it off.

faidoi

Pentax K10D

Pentax DA 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 AF

12/12/2003 10:10:45 PM · #4

What were the settings on the camera at the time the photos were taken?
Tiff?Jpeg?What was the original image size?Settings?

It may be because of digital zoom or lower original image size blown up.

Found out that someone was using the lowest setting on the camera for ease of transferred to the challenges and the images were not that great. 640x480 original image size.

Always try to use the highest settings that you can manage.

12/12/2003 10:11:04 PM · #5

Nick,

On the first picture, this is normal. If you CROP a 5 megapix picture down to 640x480, you are going to loose a ton of detail. I just tried it and got the same results. You probably know this already: you don't want to crop an image that much. Instead, shoot the picture so you don't have to crop it that much.

On the second picture... did you crop that also?? If NOT, then there could be a problem with your camera because it's TERRIBLE. No idea what would cause that. Did you crop this one, or just resize it? That's important to know for sure.

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED

12/12/2003 10:15:37 PM · #6

The settings were:

JPEG fine, no digital zoom (the dsc-v1 doesn't have one) and i didn't resized any of these pictures they are the actual pixels took by the camera but i just showed you a part of the image

alanfreed

Nikon Z9

12/12/2003 10:18:46 PM · #7

What about the ISO?

Pentax DA 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 AF

12/12/2003 10:22:00 PM · #8

Originally posted by nicklevy:

You said you cropped them in your first post. So if you cropped them to 640x480 (like you said you did), then this is the problem. Do you know what Crop means? Not trying to be "funny", just asking. Crop means you are changing the pixels (information) in your image to the amount you are selecting before you crop. So if you have an image that is right out of the camera and, say, 6 inches by 4 inches, and your crop selection is 1 inch by 1 inch, you are remove 24 times the original amount of digital data. So that would cause the bad images.

faidoi

Pentax K10D

12/12/2003 10:26:33 PM · #9

Originally posted by alansfreed:

What about the ISO?

ISO 400 would produce noise.

12/12/2003 10:30:32 PM · #10

I just re-read you last reply.... "showing just part of the image" means you cropped it to 640x480 (or whatever size it is). If you did this with both images then I doubt you have a problem (detail wise) because that is what will happen.

Instead, you should RESIZE the original pictures to 640x480 and post those instead. Most likely they will look fine.

Give it a try.

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM

12/12/2003 10:46:11 PM · #11

Here are the EXIF fro the pic

Exposure time 1/400s
F/stop 8.0
ISO 100
Focal lenght 28mm (mean 134mm on my camera)

Thanks for the reply chris but I think yu gonna have to explain more about what you mean when you say that cropping result in a loss of quality and resizing is not... because i understand it the other way. Let me explain.

My picture is 2592x1944 pixels, that mean 5038848 pixels. If i crop a part of the picture to 640x480 (307200 pixels), that leave me with the same definition but just for the part of the picture that i keep. If, instead of cropping, I resize the entire picture to 640x480, that leave me with the same 307200 pixels but for the entire picture this time. In my mind if i want to see a detail in the image i better crop to keep the definition than resize to lose it... but the question given the EXIF is: Is it normal to get that amount of noise or is that amount of noise way above normal level?

brianlh

Canon EOS-450D Rebel XSi

12/12/2003 11:02:25 PM · #12

that would be my understanding of cropping/resizing pixels as well..

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro

12/12/2003 11:22:41 PM · #13

Nick, you are correct, if you resize to 640x480 or crop to 640x480 you'll wind up with the same number of pixels. But... the big difference is this: When you crop the image to that size, you are trying to see a tiny part of of the original image (1/24th like I said before) at 640x480 on you computer screen. This is different from resizing the entire image to 640x480 and viewing THAT on your computer screen because the data loss is less apparent because you are seeing a larger (original size) image.

All you really need to do is post that second image without cropping it, and resize it to 640x480 and post it. Then see how it looks compared to other images here. All the other images here are 640x480... so if it looks decent compared to those, that means your camera is OK. Now you could zoom (or crop) in on the image further and comapre that to other images but you are wasting your time basically unless you are serious about finding the camera with the absolute best resolution. I think you aren't interested in this however since your original question was "is my camera defective".

OK, so post your original pic (2nd one) resized to 640x480. No cropping. :)

TechnoShroom

Canon EOS-30D

12/13/2003 12:00:02 AM · #14

Chris, what you're saying isn't making a lot of sense to me. You want to see images resized to 640x480 to judge quality? That makes no sense. Nick was right to post 100% crops of the image to try and determine the relative amount of noise compared to other cameras. A 640x480 crop of the actual pixels shows the information contained in the photo without data loss or manipulation unlike the 640x480 resize you are talking about which compresses and hides noise and detail.

However, to compare apples to apples there needs to be posted 100% crops from other comparable cameras to compare, not the resized images seen here. This doesn't seem to be in the scope of this particular website. DPReview has plenty of information on noise levels of various cameras as well as sample images that you can compare full size.

To chime in on the original question though, the level of noise in the blue sky doesn't seem to be out of line with a prosumer camera like you have. As far as the hyperfocal related crop it's hard to say if it should really be sharper or not. Things like atmospheric haze and resolving power of the lens play a big part in how sharp the image is going to be. It's my opinion that all digital images, regardless of the camera that made them, benefit from at least some post-processing and sharpening is just part of that process. It looks to me, at least from the crops you provided that there is nothing wrong with your camera.

e301

12/13/2003 03:10:08 AM · #15

Using a 5MP image at 100% magnification - what you're showing us with your 640x480 crop, is rather pointless though: do you know of a computer screen that can show all of a 5MP image at 100% magnification in one go? At 72ppi?

All digital camera images are to some extent noisy. Your doesn't look any worse than many, to me. If you had re-sized the image to 640x480 and it still looks like that (and blue skies are notoriously bad for noise), then progs like NeatImage are a very good fox - if used correctly.

And the hyperfocal illustration looks OK to me - you aren't going to get a perfectly sharp image at 1:1 out of your camera ... does it still look woolly at, say, 70% magnification on screen?

ed

Message edited by author 2003-12-13 03:12:17.