Why are these so grainy? OH Wendy?!

[kate3]

Or anyone else who can shed some light on this.
Why do all my pics look so grainy.
I justed purchased this camera and am experimenting but what is wrong?
the specs are
Canon S3IS powershot
indoor natural light
and i think in auto if not programed mode.

thanks,

[Carbone]

I'm not Wendy (!!) but I will attempt to help, if I can ;)

Look at the ISO setting of your pictures. You can do this using Canon ImageBrowser (Mac) or Zoombrowser (Pc). If the ISO setting reads higher than 200, that could explain the grain you're seeing.

If it's 200 or less, then maybe the detail setting for your picture was normal or fine, instead of superfine. Try setting it to Superfine.

Hope this helps,

Ray

[Chuck S.]

Kate, they're great shots! Any graininess may be the result of the camera in Auto ISO mode selecting the highest ISO ('film speed') possible because you were shooting with available light and no flash. I'll have to go check in my S3 IS manual......okay, it looks like if you have it set for Auto High ISO, you can get some grainy results. Perhaps that's the explanation, although, again, those are fine looking photos.

Chuck

[Carbone]

I second Chuck, those are great pictures !!!

Ray

[NMarti]

Kate
What do you have your picture resolution set to in the camera menu? That may well explain it. You may have it on a low resolution and then are viewing at a larger size than the resolution is intended for. Adorable baby!

[Wendy]

Oh my ...

What a cutie :)

Wendy

[kate3]

WOW! thanks everyone for the fast responses. Maybe i should have checked who was online first..
I will have to double check my settings.. i was under the impression that in auto the iso was set automaticaly?
When I converted them to B&W it is much worse.

Thanks for the compliments on the baby.. He is my first nephew. I watch him one day a week and thought i would use him as a gineau pig to my obsession.
Plus i think i will make a valentine for his mom and dad.

Thanks for all the advice.. going to read my manual....

[TonyW]

I would guess too that ISO is too high - don't know the camera but maybe Auto just increases ISO to let you take a picture indoors in natural light. Great pictures though and the grain is easy to fix. I used Neat Image which is my favorite add-in for reducing noise. Image wasn't big enough to get a real good sample of noise to fix but it didn't do too bad a job (I tweaked the Levels too):

768

Tony

[Chuck S.]

Kate, I think you're right - in Auto mode, the ISO speed is chosen for you. And that can be a problem when the light is low like it often is indoors. If you don't manually raise the flash, the camera will try really hard to give you a well-exposed shot with a minimum of blurringl; that means it will go for the highest ISO.
Chuck

[JulieM]

Tony: Thanks for mentioning Neat Image. I tried the trial version on a few scans and it is very effective. Great plug-in...

[lowbone]

If your ISO was set too high you will see grain ( digital noise ) especially on the the type of camera you are using ( very small sensor and tiny pixels that are not very good at light gathering ) If your photo was under exposed and you brought the exposure up in photoshop you will see grain, adding excessive brightness or even contrast in PS will add noise. If you try to enlarge a very small part of your image you will see noise. Could be any one of those things but in your case most lkely it was the ISO. Keeping the ISO down to 100 or no higher then 200 and getting the correct exposure will save you all kinds of grief later on.

[cats4jan]

Thanks for that information about ISO - I find when I use auto on my camera, my outdoor photos are crystal clear - but when I go indoors - I have some blurring and grain.

I do like to stay on auto because I always forget to reset - but I guess that means I'm sacrificing quality.

I thought I needed a new camera, but after this last trip where all the photos were outdoor photos - I realized it wasn't the camera or my photo taking ability. It was that the camera loves "auto" outside, but isn't all that happy with "auto" inside.

Now I know why - however, I don't know what to set the ISO to indoors even if I wanted to.

Janice

BTW - those baby photos are wonderful - you've really captured personality.

[Chuck S.]

Janice, the problem with indoors is not enough light. You either use the flash (with an ISO of 50 or 100) or you use available light and let the ISO go up to max. For me, it's a tradeoff between the harsh shadows of flash and the graininess of no flash. No easy answer; it'll depend on the situation.

Chuck

p.s. I, too, have the S3 IS - most complicated piece of electronic gear I've ever owned! I'm going to wear out the manual looking things up...

[kate3]

Chuck~ i guess i should have posted here before purchasing the camera.. if you are having a hard time learning i am doomed.. thanks for the info. on ISO.
i will try and practice again.

Tony~ Where can i get that plug-in and i am assuming it will work for PSE4? Your pic is so much better and the noise is so much less.

Thanks again everyone,

[lowbone]

Chuck, I assume you are using an accessory flash and not the on camera one. Have you tried bouncing the flash? have you tried diffusers? I get very good results with flash using various diffusers. Two of my favorites are the Gary Fong Lightsphere, a wierd looking overpriced device ( Google Gary Fong ) and the Flip It ( google Flip It ) I would also like to recommend a book,
" Flash, the most available light" by Quest C Couch lll ( Google Lumiquest )
Throughout this book they try to peddle Lumiquests diffusers. Just ignore that and pick up the techniques.

[lowbone]

Kate, Google Neat Image and it will take you to their site. They have a trial version that is limited in what it can do. You will have to pay for the full version. Another very popular noise reduction program is Noise Ninja also found on Google. I have tried both of these programs and they usually help a noisy print quite q bit although on rare occasion they make it worse. Try getting things right in the camera. Every time you apply noise reduction you will lose a little detail from the photo.

[Chuck S.]

Chuck, I assume you are using an accessory flash and not the on camera one
Lowbone: Regrettably, there's no hot shoe on the S3 IS. There may be a way to use an accessory flash mounted on a tripod, but I haven't read that chapter of the manual yet.

if you are having a hard time learning i am doomed

Kate, not so! Fortunately, the important features of the camera are fairly intuitive and easy to learn. But it has so much 'gingerbread' surrounding the basic functions that it gets downright annoying at times. It's like the engineers and designers at Canon said to each other, "Let's see how many features we can pack into one P&S camera" and then had a contest to see who could come up with the most absurd feature!

Chuck

[sydneysnana]

I just spent an hour at the local camera store where I picked up some tips for this camera. I have the S2IS...after a year still trying to learn it. One tip I found is working good is indoors use SCN mode with "Nightsnap" shot and flash indoors.

Also watching this thread, (although not sure what they are talking about half the time) and this is about flash slave:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=268542

Michelle

[TonyW]

Kate: You can get Neat Image from:

http://www.neatimage.com/featuremap.html

The free demo is pretty complete (I think it even has a plug-in for Elements now in the demo which it didn't used to). I finished up buying it because I use it a lot, especially as a plug-in. It comes with profiles for different cameras and settings although I usually just auto profile which is very simple to do. Nice thing is you don't have to remove the noise from everything - you can make a selection and just remove the noise from that part of the image - great for babies :) . Of all the plug-ins I have I'd rate it as the one I use the most because it lets me go to very high ISO's (up to 3200). I do a lot of shots in places where you can't use flash and it lets me get good pictures even in dimly lit places.

Tony

[msbrad]

I know the wrong iso setting can knock a photo for a loop, but...Just one other thing, and this could be coming from Left Field...but is your camera set to its highest quality setting?
That has made a huge difference in the quality level of photo my step daughter takes on her camera. (She likes to save room on the memory card).
m

[Rusty]

Kate,

with or w/out noise, those are wonderful pictures.

My wife was traveling with our daughter at that age. The man in the seat next to her on the airplane said, "That's a real cute little boy."

Now, the kid is wearing a pink dress. My wife responds, "Thank you, but, it's a girl."

His reply, "Oh, why did you cut all her hair?" :D :D

Rusty

PS. the man was Bob Richards, the Olympic Decathlon champion from the 1950s