Photographers? Official

[MarkRyan]

Are you testing it only indoors without flash? I've no idea what's expected for a basic point-in-shoot in low light situations without flash, but what you have there is what I would guess.

Jeff, what camera were you using again? It's a point-and-shoot, not a DSLR, right?

[Fe 26]

I tested it everywhere. And auto has flash on all the time. Everything has a grain.

[JefmcC]

Are you testing it only indoors without flash? I've no idea what's expected for a basic point-in-shoot in low light situations without flash, but what you have there is what I would guess.

Jeff, what camera were you using again? It's a point-and-shoot, not a DSLR, right?

I'm using a Canon g9.

[MarkRyan]

I tested it everywhere. And auto has flash on all the time. Everything has a grain.

That was the best photo you've taken, or the worst? My eight-year-old Canon S200 takes better than that.

[Josh]

My very first cellphone takes better pictures than that. Are you sure the flash fired on that image, because it sure as shit doesn't look like it.

[MarkRyan]

There's definitely no flash on that image, the camera shot at a high ISO and slow shutter.

[Josh]

drastic noob tactics.

anyway: http://regex.info/exif.cgi?url=http:...nt/picture.jpg

[Fe 26]

That was the best photo you've taken, or the worst? My eight-year-old Canon S200 takes better than that.

That was the middle of the road of the test shots. Everything was left on factory defaults. The worst were blurry and looked like I took them while waving my arms around. The best were slightly more clear but grainy and full of noise when you looked at them 100%

I turned off all the presets and that got rid of a lot of the noise. This picture isn't perfect, but it shows that the camera is at least usable.

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[ElCapichan]

The only real thing I see wrong with that last image is the white balance. Pretty much all cameras today are going to be able to take decent shots, it's just getting a feel for them. Of course taking shots indoor with no flash and on full auto isn't going to turn out the best shots. Point and shoots are at their best when used outdoor in good light. With a small, fixed lens (and honestly a pretty cheap on to make the camera affordable), and not state of the art image sensors, you can't really expect top of the line images. Not saying it isn't possible to get nice images with the camera, you just have to get a feel for it. I'm pretty sure I have used that camera before, and the images came out pretty damn nice for a cheap point and shoot.

EDIT: From my experience, it seems like point and shoots try to be really good at one area while sacrificing another. Some camera can only make really sharp images, others can come out vibrant but suffer from being overly cantrasty, while others are washed out but offer a higher dynamic range (or appear to have a higher dynamic range when in fact just toning down the contrast big time). Just gotta tweak the setting to your liking. You should be able to go in ad adjust contrast, sharpness, vibrancy, etc. somewhere in the settings... I would think. Even if the photos don't come out perfect to begin with, that doesn't mean they can't be worked with. I have plenty top quality shots (shots that I like at least) that didn't come out looking quite like it did to my eye. Could be lighting, not being able to get the right shutter speed (because of lighting)... actually it pretty much all has to do with lighting. But if you know how to take the best shot possible with what you have to work with, you can do some post to get it just like you want. I did some quick editing with that last shot just to see what a little post could do. I adjusted the color balance, curves, brightness/contrast and the levels and the shot looks pretty good to me. The image is sharp (at 100% the dogs hair is still noticeably fine. There really isn't any noise to be seen (don't confuse noise with grain). It's not a perfect edit, but I think it shows that the initial image you get out of the camera isn't what it is stuck being. I'd say continue messing around with the camera and try to get your hands on any photo editing software. You don't need PS. Just something to white balance and adjust brightness and contrast.

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[Drewbacca]

I mean, look at this shit

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Yeah that's a picture caused by an unsteady hand. You have to practice shooting to fix that kind of thing. I used to ALWAYS do it. Just took practice to correct.