View Full Version : My Camera - Canon S3 1S
decemberfall
12-23-2006, 02:46 AM
Okay so some of you read the post about the camera discussion, well i've had the camera for a week, well almost... i've noticed something strange... about every 5th picture comes out fuzzy, like it's not in focus... any ideas on why that would happen?
and PS, i'm fully aware it's an IS, i was being lazy.
masherscf
12-23-2006, 03:04 AM
Okay so some of you read the post about the camera discussion, well i've had the camera for a week, well almost... i've noticed something strange... about every 5th picture comes out fuzzy, like it's not in focus... any ideas on why that would happen?
and PS, i'm fully aware it's an IS, i was being lazy.
If every picture was out of focus, I would be worried. However, the main cause of intermittent lack of focus is usually user error.
The IS isn't magic and one of the issue of a point-and-shot camera is that it takes a moment for the focus to lock in. Also, if there's not enough ambient light, the camera's auto-focus may not work properly at all.
If you the problematic picture, I could give you a better guess.
decemberfall
12-23-2006, 03:09 AM
here's one from earlier:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v84/decemberfall/IMG_0041.jpg
masherscf
12-23-2006, 03:12 AM
here's one from earlier:
Did you use the flash?
decemberfall
12-23-2006, 03:13 AM
nope, directly under a light, and the 2 I took after that one came out perfect, just that one was fuzzy
masherscf
12-23-2006, 03:21 AM
nope, directly under a light, and the 2 I took after that one came out perfect, just that one was fuzzy
It's camera shake. You just held it still two times out of three. The IS isn't magic. You only get about 2 stops of shutter speed.
Are you using automatic ISO or manual. If the camera chose a lower ISO, it would decrease the shutter speed to compensate.
The zoom setting could also increase your camera shake. A good rule of thumb with a normal camera is to keep the shutter speed higher than the reciprocal of the focal length. The IS would give you maybe 2 extra stops of shutter speed. So divide that number by 4.
For example, if you use a 60mm focal length, you should keep the shutter speed at least 1/60th of a second. With IS activated you can decrease that to 1/15th of a second.
One of the drawbacks of a compact point and shoots like your canon is that it has very little aperture range. Therefore it controls exposure mostly with shutter speed.
Try turning up the ISO and see if that makes a difference.