question

noob873 · Dec 31, 2007

Not sure if this is the right place but whatever.

I have a d50 and Ive been noticing a lot of my pictures are kinda grainy/noise and the image doesnt seem as sharp as it should, for example, one I took when I was testing out my new macro lens.
(the top portion of the picture)

And I had my ISO on the lowest it could go (200)

Then when I tried taking similar pictures with my dads d80 that graininess (uh...? lol) wasnt there. I know d80's are better cameras but is this because of the camera quality or are my settings just off?

Kanikula · Dec 31, 2007

Well bud, this was shot at ISO 1600!!! Yikes! Is your ISO setting on auto or manual?? The D50 is a brilliant cam - most of the time its the operator

noob873 · Dec 31, 2007

Really? How do you know, lol.
I thought I had it on 200...

Kanikula · Dec 31, 2007

noob873 said:
Really? How do you know, lol.
I thought I had it on 200...

Just checked out your Exif Data - your also shooting at 1/4000

Bring it down to something around 1/250 and put your F stop at 5.6 (ish) f25 is a bit small

noob873 · Dec 31, 2007

Yeah I remember I had to have the shutterspeed a bit faster than Id want...and same with the aperture, I was trying to put it at 4.5 for smaller dof but when I tried the slower shutter and lower aperture the flower was completely blown out and you couldnt see any detail in it. Are there any more settings that might be set wrong?

Sideburns · Dec 31, 2007

change your ISO to like 100. Then work it out from there.

If your photos were ok to edit, I woulda noise ninja'd it.

noob873 · Dec 31, 2007

If you want to go ahead and do it.

Lowest ISO on d50 is 200.

usayit · Dec 31, 2007

Honestly.....

I like the grain.

JerryPH · Dec 31, 2007

He's right. The wonders of Auto ISO... lol

Why were you at 1/4000th on an inanimate object?

noob873 · Dec 31, 2007

Like I said before on any lower aperture or shutter speed the picture was blown out and you couldnt see anything in the flower, just all white. And when using my dads d80 this wasnt the case. So I would like to kno why this is? Is there any other settings that could be off?
I understand the camera settings but Im still somewhat new so help me out

.

usayit · Dec 31, 2007

At an ISO of 1600 the camera's sensor is set to be very sensitive to light. The high aperture and shutter speed was required to cut the amount of light landing on the camera's sensor for a proper exposure. While running a small aperture or high shutter speed in of itself is not a bad thing, running the camera's sensor at a setting of ISO 1600 will introduce a good amount of noise to the final image.

So the answer as to why you are getting grainy images is that you are running your sensor at ISO 1600.

Which leads us to the next question.. how do you reduce the grain?

You can reduce the grain/noise of the image by lowering the sensor's ISO setting to something more reasonable. You can start with an ISO setting of either 200 or 400. Once you have your camera set to an ISO of letsay 200, your sensor will be less sensitive to light. Since your sensor is less sensitive to light, you can then reduce the shutter speed and/or open up the aperture to allow more light to fall on the sensor plane.

noob873 · Dec 31, 2007

Ok I was just adjusting/looking through all my settings and even though I had the ISO at 200 like some of you said it was actually on auto...
I turned that off. Tomorrow I'll be taking a bunch of pictures so we'll see how things turn out now.

Thanks for the help.