Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Camera Correction

After looking at the last "Before and After" post, I was convinced that I needed to get a new camera to replace my 5-year-old digital model. Since this was my first foray into the digital world, I figured that the technology must have been getting old. Maybe the images appeared so grainy because I'm now used to seeing the crisp photos of the swanky new cameras? Still, since megapixel number shouldn't degrade image quality unless you're enlarging images, I couldn't figure out why my little 5MP was creating photos that looked like Seurat paintings. Google to the rescue! Apparently, the "auto" setting on my Canon Powershot has a tendency to set the ISO ridiculously high the second it thinks that it's in a low-light situation, which tends to saturate the image too much and creates the grainy effect. As a test, I took a few more shots of the family room and dining room with the ISO manually set to 100, and viola, much clearer images. These photos capture the true color of the family room and dining room better than the previous post did. Enjoy!