Grainy Photos, Some advice please ?

[kokpuffz1995]

I have a Nikon D3000, it's about 3 years old, and yesterday while taking photos they all came out grainy. This has never happened before. No matter how in focus or how much light was in the room they'd come out grainy. When I first got it I changed the settings to how I'd prefer it, such as shutter speed and Active D-Lighting, but that didn't affect the photo quality in any bad way. I was trying to fix it, my brother and I think there's something internal wrong but we know little to nothing about cameras.
EDIT: I should also mention I don't mess with the ISO. I've reset the camera to see if it would help, it didn't. I reset the setting I had before refreshing the camera, it didn't help at all. The ISO Is on normal the last time I checked. Noise reduction is on. I've tried to edit out it and it didn't
work.
Edit 2 : Seeing as everyone is telling me it the ISO or (at some mentions) I need a tripod/stable surface, I tested it out, every ISO setting, on a flat stable surface, nothing worked, in fact it got worse. I have proper lighting and all that good stuff.

Here are some photo's, hopefully you can see the difference.
This is from about a week ago, there's no grain that I can see at least.

Kokopuffz1995's deviantART Gallery This is from my Deviantart, taken about christmas.

Kokopuffz1995's deviantART Gallery This is from yesterday, as you can see it's extremely grainy.

http://kokopuffz1995.deviantart.com/art/Babies-Breath-and-Rose-348696227 and here's something from today.

I'd post a couple more photos but my files are too large.

 

[480sparky]

I suspect it's a result of high ISO. If that's the case, then you have noise in the image.

 

[gsgary]

I dont see any grain only noise, one from yesterday is underexposed, there is nothing wrong with your camera, operator error

 

[HiddenPearl]

Lower your ISO (don't let the camera increase it automatically) and try to get more light in through the lens using a wider aperture and longer exposure time. You will need a tripod.

 

[skyy38]

I've always rolled with auto ISO during normal business hours-never a problem.

I don't trust "D-Lighting" however so I never use it...

 

[HiddenPearl]

Clearly there wasn't enough light for the picture. If you left the ISO for the camera to figure out automatically, it increased it to the point where you now notice noise. Like I said, lower the ISO manually, and increase the amount of light through the other settings. It will be far less grainy.

 

[KmH]

Edit 2 : ....... I have proper lighting and all that good stuff.

Great! Now all you need is to increase your photography knowledge and skill.

I recommend you learn more about these subjects:
Camera Exposure: Aperture, ISO & Shutter Speed
Understanding Camera Metering and Exposure
Digital Camera Image Noise: Concept and Types
ETTR
Optimizing Exposure

and learn how to read the histogram that can be displayed on the rear LCD of your camera. The histogram is the key to judging exposure :
Understanding Digital Camera Histograms: Tones and Contrast
Understanding Digital Camera Histograms: Luminosity and Color

 

[TCampbell]

Noise is the result of using high ISO or a hot sensor. The hot sensor problem generally only effects people taking very long time-exposure shots. For the vast majority of cases, it's high ISO.

The ISO should be kept to the lowest setting you can use while still letting you get the shot by adjusting your aperture & shutter speeds. Go outside on a bright sunny day, shoot at ISO 100, you shouldn't notice any noise. But if you're shooting indoors without flash, outdoors in heavy shadow or on a heavy overcast day then you'll have to bump up the ISO and you'll begin to introduce noise.

You didn't include the EXIF (exposure data) for those shots. Whenever you have trouble with shots you should always include the EXIF data. We can tell a lot by glancing at the settings that were used when you took the shot.

 

[Photomanic]

Just a thought, but if are shooting in Jpeg and then heavily editing exposure and colours in post. That could cause some degrade in the image?

 

[Light Guru]

Clearly there wasn't enough light for the picture. If you left the ISO for the camera to figure out automatically, it increased it to the point where you now notice noise. Like I said, lower the ISO manually, and increase the amount of light through the other settings. It will be far less grainy.

I looked at the ISO on the image posted ant it was 100 so obviously the camera didn't automatically increase it.

 

[Light Guru]

You didn't include the EXIF (exposure data) for those shots. Whenever you have trouble with shots you should always include the EXIF data. We can tell a lot by glancing at the settings that were used when you took the shot.

Yes its nice when people write the EXIFdata in the post but the info is embedded into the image unless it is stripped.

ExposureTime 0.008
FNumber 5.6
ExposureProgram Not defined
ISOSpeedRatings 100

There are a bunch of web browser plugins that will show you the EXIF data on photos

 

[HiddenPearl]

Are we talking about the same picture (Kokopuffz1995's deviantART Gallery - 1142013 2)? I find hard to believe that the grainy image we are discussing was taken with those settings.

 

[Light Guru]

Are we talking about the same picture (Kokopuffz1995's deviantART Gallery I find hard to believe that the grainy image we are discussing was taken with those settings.

Im talking about the one embedded into the post it looks like that other site strips the EXIF data from the image.

 

[Joves]

Clearly there wasn't enough light for the picture. If you left the ISO for the camera to figure out automatically, it increased it to the point where you now notice noise. Like I said, lower the ISO manually, and increase the amount of light through the other settings. It will be far less grainy.

I agree with you. Get out of the Auto anything mode.

Clearly there wasn't enough light for the picture. If you left the ISO for the camera to figure out automatically, it increased it to the point where you now notice noise. Like I said, lower the ISO manually, and increase the amount of light through the other settings. It will be far less grainy.

I looked at the ISO on the image posted ant it was 100 so obviously the camera didn't automatically increase it.

They only posted one photo, and that is the one they say there is no problem with. The others they say they are having problems with are not here, and I am not looking around their site to find them either, so we do not know the ISO of those shots. Claims adequate lighting but who knows.

 

[Light Guru]

The ISO Is on normal the last time I checked.

Normal is not an ISO. ISO's come in the form of numbers like 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400