# Grainy photos help?



## Dalecamino (Aug 7, 2011)

It was brought to my attention that I should have better photos. I looked at this pen and, noticed that upon enlarging the thumbnails, they do appear grainy looking. I must have thrown something out of order when I changed the pixels. But, I don't know what. Camera is a Canon Powershot A560. Anyone know how to get back real quick?

http://www.penturners.org/forum/showthread.php?t=84230


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## BigShed (Aug 7, 2011)

Did you change the ISO setting to a higher one, that will increase the grain.

There should be a setting in the menu where you can change that, or perhaps the camera does it automatically if there is not enough available light and you don't have flash on.


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## Dalecamino (Aug 7, 2011)

Fred, these photos were taken outdoors, under a white roof. Using the auto setting. So yes, I guess the camera does it automaticly. I'm wondering if using the Manual function would be better.


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## toolcrazy (Aug 7, 2011)

Couple other things to check.

What photo quality is the camera set at?
What editing program are you using?

Some compression algorithms in some of the free photo software, sucks. Also, some cameras built in software that compresses the photos, suck. 

Solution: Increase photo quality in your camera and use better software. I know, this is all just a gimme, but I'm just saying.


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## Dalecamino (Aug 7, 2011)

Thanks Steve, I have the camera set at high resolution. Load the pictures in the Zoom Browser software on my computer then, edit with Picasa 3 I have suspected the connection with Picasa as part of the problem. But, just don't know.


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## Sylvanite (Aug 7, 2011)

Well, the noise (a.k.a. pixelization or "grain") doesn't look that bad to me.  The pictures are very soft, however, so I checked your exposure settings on one.  Here are some suggestions:
Some of the blur looks motion related.  Are you shooting handheld?  If so, try using a tripod.  When using a tripod, be sure to turn image stabilization off.
The focal length is 8mm.  This indicates to me that you are probably shooting very close.  Try backing off some.
The F-stop is f3.2, which is very wide.  Try stepping it down to at least f8.
The ISO setting is 400, which will introduce some noise.  Drop it down to 200, or lower if possible.
The digital zoom is 1.92.  Try not to use the digital zoom (optical zoom only).  Digitial zoom is just cropping and interpolation done in the camera.  It's better to do that in post-processing.
Picasa doesn't do the best job of resampling photos, and makes them look soft.  The Gimp, or Photoshop Elements have better resize algorithms - look for "bicubic sharper".  They also have an "unsharp mask" filter to sharpen photos more.
I hope that helps,
Eric


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## Dalecamino (Aug 7, 2011)

Thank you Eric. I always use a tripod at a distance of about 18" and use the zoom lever around the button set on auto. I think I can make these adjustments you've suggested, using Manual mode.

I'll try that out tomorrow. Also will check into another processor.


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