Help with a new camera
 

Hi all,

I'm a new user and I hope you experts can help me out.

I have just bought an Olympus SP-565UZ and am having trouble getting a sharp image. I have attached an image of the kind of shot I am getting.

The images appear fuzzy and almost like an oil painting up close. What am I doing wrong? I have tried different settings (default, portrait, indoor, flash on/off, fast shutter speeds etc) and I still get the same look - with compression set to Fine and Normal, it makes no difference.

I have it set to 10 Megapixels so it's not as if I am complaining about low quality 640x480 images. :)

Hope you can help out, thank you very much.

Hi James, I do not know this camera and have never used one, but I have just read through a couple of reviews of it and it should certainly perform better than the example you have given. A couple of questions first - Is the thumbnail the full frame image? I suppose you resized it for posting. Was the thumbnail shot taken through a glass window? I take it that is your Apple keyboard and how far from the object were you? The closest you can focus in Standard mode is about 4 feet. Can you remember the settings? Please set the camera on fully automatic and take a shot of the street outside your house and post it as a comparison.

Hi Andy,

Yes, that is a resized/cropped image. I was stood about 4 feet away and that image is a (not too extreme) close up to show the fuzzy problem.

It was not taken through a window but just stood a few feet back.

I took some photos outside in the sunlight and the problem isn't as noticable when everything's in focus (the same oil painting look is still there when I zoom in a bit).

Will there be a better setting for indoor other than the actual 'Indoor' setting? I've seen some indoor product photos on eBay that will be taken in similar conditions that look great. I'm not sure what to change to fix the problem.

Thanks for your help so far Andy!

Hi James, Try the shot again, from a minimum of five feet - measure the distance to make sure of it and then re attach to post so I can look at it. If you were inside the four feet you should have switched to the intermediate macro mode before taking it.

Okay, I'll wait until its similarly lighted tomorrow and try the two things you suggested (another shot of the keyboard indoors and an outside shot on auto) - I don't want such different lighting conditions to affect my results.

I'll post those images tomorrow, hopefully. Thanks for your advice so far.

It looks to me like this shot was taken at a high ISO and a combination of noise and in camera noise reduction have removed all the detail. Bridge cameras like your one tend to perform very well upto ISO400 and then the image quality falls away dramatically at higher ISOs - what ISO was this shot taken on?

I just checked and it says ISO-800 and Exposure Ime 1/500 sec.

What can be done to fix this?

Hi Andy, I have taken some shots on automatic like you asked.

PC Photo 1 - This is the keyboard shot on Auto taken from 6-7 feet away.

PC Photo 2 - This is the same keyboard shot taken from about 6-7 feet away but with the indoor setting and with flash. Looks awful. :(

Outdoor Photo 1 - This is one of my garden on auto mode.

Outdoor Photo 2 - This is another Auto garden shot.

Even at actual size you can see the fuzzy problem on the grass. What are you thoughts on what's going wrong?

Thanks for your help.

I think postcardcv has hit the nail on the head. PC Photo 1 is ISO 100, PC Photo 2 is ISO 800. Bridge cameras such as yours will lose huge amounts of detail at higher ISO settings. The other images, especially the outdoor ones, show that there is nothing actually wrong with your camera at all. If the picture you attached in your original post is a crop taken from an image similar to PC Photo 2, then I'm not surprised it looks as bad as it does, this would be a very, very small part of the overall image.

The fuzzy bits on the grass are again as I would expect from this kind of camera. A zoom lens that has an equivalent 35mm film focal length range from 26mm to 520mm(!) is not going to be as sharp as a Leica prime. Also, the size of the sensor in the camera is very small on these kind of cameras compared to dSLR models, together with the in-camera jpeg processing, the results are consistent with what I'd expect from a bridge camera.

The pictures are all pretty much what I'd expect to see. If you insist on pixel peeping at 100% image size, using ISO 800 on a bridge camera, then you are going to be disappointed. Look at the picture, not the pixels.

I'm guessing I should have gone with my original thought of a DSLR instead of high-spec Digital Carema. :confused:

I had my eye on two others, would a camera like the 'Sony DSLR-A200K Digital SLR Camera' or 'Nikon D40 Digital SLR' produce noticeably superior pictures and eliminate this type of problem?

You pays your money, you takes your choice. If you want quality, you have to pay for it. You have a camera lens with a very wide zoom range. This is convenient, but the compromises in the design are very high to get this kind of range, in the package that fits, at a cost that is affordable. You can't have something for nothing.

Yes. But bear in mind the cost of not only the body, but the lenses you would have to buy to get the range you have with your Olympus. Buy a cheap 70-300 lens for a dSLR, it will be better than the Oly for image quality, but to get ultimate sharpness, you would have to buy a very expensive bit of glass.

Eliminate is a strong word. "Reduce very considerably" would be my description. Most entry level dSLR are relatively noise free at ISO800, but push them up to 1600 or 3200 and the problems will still be there. Nowhere near as bad as your ISO800 example, but the laws of physics still apply.

Duncan

James. I concur with Duncan ( yelvertoft ) and postcardcv. A zoom lens that has a 35mm equivalent of 26mm to 520 mm is being asked to do an awful lot and is not going to be as sharp as a good prime DSLR lens. You need to fix the ISO within the range of 100 - 400 at most if you want sharp pictures and once you crop them any flaws are going to be magnified. If you want an expanding system then the Nikon D40, a Canon or Sony DSLR are the way to go.

Would it be a good idea to get the Sony DSLR-A200K and then think about upgrading the lens at a later date?

Will the A200K produce nice quality shots using the lens that's already attached? I'm not too fussed about the magnification, the 4x or so optical zoom equivalent of the A200K's lens will be enough for me.

The simple answer is there would be a huge improvement but of course to get the lens range you already have will cost a lot more money.

Depends how much money you can justify spending. Only you can answer that question.

Yes, it will produce nice shots with the kit lens. Bear in mind that "4x" is only the ratio of the widest angle zoom setting to the longest telephoto setting. It's better to think in terms of real focal lengths, not optical zoom factors.

Thanks, that's all I needed to know. I already mentioned the 20x zoom is not as important to me as the quality of picture (just a novelty to me). I'm not massively into photography, I am a graphic designer and taking photos is necessary for some jobs but is not the most important part of my job. I am never planning on spending too much money on a camera - I own some great top of the range equipment, but a camera that will take some quality photos will be enough for me - I know I could never compete with professional photographers for the money I am willing to spend!

Thank you all for your help. You've been very helpful. :)

Hi James.
i echo what has already been posted here.
The results you are getting are typical of a compact/bridge digital camera.
Your images have all gone through the in-built cameras jpeg processing. Noise (grain) reduction and artificial sharpening are pretty much evident in most compacts now. unfortunately, most are also still suckered in by the high megapixel counts now showing on all but the cheapest digital cameras.

To be honest with you, even very early digital SLR cameras like the Fuji S1 or Nikon D1, now selling online secondhand for only about £100 (+ a few more £ for the lens of your choice) would blow your Olympus results away.....and on paper the Nikon and Fuji are both 'only' shooting about 3megapixels pictures (so no one wants them....as they can't possibly put up with only 3 mp! lol)......I use to get very frustrated at the shop when epople would still go blindly buying the cheapest camera they could that had the highest mp count......though the manufacturers do 'promote' the mp counts, and of course retailers take advantage of this ignorance to the whole story too.

James, your experience is unfortunately not uncommon.
Your graphics might even benefit from the different file options a DSLR can deliver too?

good luck
cheers
Joe

Thank you for that Joe. Great post! :)

I was originally looking at SLRs on Amazon and saw a couple of good cameras for around the £250 mark - I then got sidetracked and ended up on a camera specific site and saw that the Olympus had a high spec for a similar price and that the SLRs on this site were well into the £300 mark. For some reason I forgot about the Amazon SLR prices and thought that DSLRs were too expensive and bought the Olympus. I usually research heavily into new purchases but as I had just been buying new top-end PC components, a new monitor and printer, I must have gotten bored with the massive process of researching into prices/reviews etc and settled too early.

I think I'll have to end up selling this camera on eBay for a loss and put it towards the camera I should have bought originally - I'll buy a better lens separately when I can afford it.

I've done well really, this is the first time I've ever been upset by a wrong purchase and I'll be sure to never make the same mistake.

Thanks you all again for the great help! :)

Hi James,

I made a similar purchase like yours a few years back. It was a toss up between a DSLR and a Bridge cam with masses of zoom. I ended up buying an Olympus C770 UZ as it had great bang for buck.

It took great pics up to A4 size without any pixelation problems around ISO 400. If there was ever any problems with the pictures or the camera I used to do the old master reset option and that fixed everything. Have you given that a try?

With respect to DSLR, find a model that you like and see what features it offers and then look at the next model or 2 above it and see what they offer. Go and ask people about the different features and what they do and what advantages they will give you. I purchased a Nikon 40x a year ago and it was a great camera. I didn't know much about photography when I bought it and it suited my needs. I then did some research and learnt more and did a few courses and found that it lacked some features that I needed like, Bracketing, Depth of field Preview, a greater range of ISO selection to name a few.

Not long after discovering these new features I upgraded to the D90. I make a point of looking for a camera that has features I want now and that has features I will probably grow into and use in the future. With respect to what make to buy its all about personal preference. Try a heap out and see which one's you like :o Just remember to choose a manufacturer that you will buy your next camera off has a model that you would like to upgrade in the future. Means you can use all your previous gear with you new camera.

Its a bit of a ramble but I hope it helped.

Thanks for the advice Weeds!