MarcHanson
5th of July 2006 (Wed), 17:10
Hi there. First post, glad I found this site. We have owned three or four Canon digital cameras over the years, upgrading every few years. The last one was a PowerShot S-30, which I used for several years.
At Xmas 2005 (about 7 months ago) I bought my wife an A520 for her present. For whatever reason (stupidity comes to mind) we didn't really take any pictures with it until we had it more than 90 days (the cutoff for returning an item to Best Buy). Or we did but did not download them to the computer for that long.
After some extended picture taking, I noticed the quality seemed "off". I tried all kinds of settings combos and have not been able to figure out the problem. Basically, no matter what settings I use on the camera, the picture comes out with the details being kind of "fuzzy". Things like print on a book are hard to read, and the details of the wood grain on furniture are not distinguishable. We took some family pictures with the camera on 10-second delay (so there was no camera shake at all) and they came out a little fuzzy. Not so bad you can't look at them, but bad enough that I notice (and I'm a camera newbie) and it bothers me.
It almost looks as if the image taken with the a520 was run through a slight noise filter or something. As an experiment, I managed to get off a shot with my PowerShot S30 (which doesn't really work due to battery/power problems) and one with the A520. I took the two pictures of a part of my wife's bookshelf, showing some books, the wood grain, etc. If you look at the two images you will see that the S30's picture, a much older camera, looks way better than the A520.
Canon tech support was not helpful, and basically didn't believe me that I hadn't done something to mess up the settings. They even had me reset the settings to factory default and it was still messed up, so they finally just said I'd have to mail it to the factory. I thought I would offer the pictures here first and see if anyone has any suggestions before I send our only currently "working" digital camera to Illinois.
Here are the links. Notice the purple book, 3rd from the left, and also the shelf the book is sitting on in both pictures.
http://www.marchanson.com/images/with_s30.jpg
http://www.marchanson.com/images/with_a520.jpg
Would love to hear comments or suggestions. If you've seen this happen before let me know what it was.
Thanks.
Marc
P.S. I should add that both pictures were taken in "AUTO" mode on the respective cameras.
At Xmas 2005 (about 7 months ago) I bought my wife an A520 for her present. For whatever reason (stupidity comes to mind) we didn't really take any pictures with it until we had it more than 90 days (the cutoff for returning an item to Best Buy). Or we did but did not download them to the computer for that long.
After some extended picture taking, I noticed the quality seemed "off". I tried all kinds of settings combos and have not been able to figure out the problem. Basically, no matter what settings I use on the camera, the picture comes out with the details being kind of "fuzzy". Things like print on a book are hard to read, and the details of the wood grain on furniture are not distinguishable. We took some family pictures with the camera on 10-second delay (so there was no camera shake at all) and they came out a little fuzzy. Not so bad you can't look at them, but bad enough that I notice (and I'm a camera newbie) and it bothers me.
It almost looks as if the image taken with the a520 was run through a slight noise filter or something. As an experiment, I managed to get off a shot with my PowerShot S30 (which doesn't really work due to battery/power problems) and one with the A520. I took the two pictures of a part of my wife's bookshelf, showing some books, the wood grain, etc. If you look at the two images you will see that the S30's picture, a much older camera, looks way better than the A520.
Canon tech support was not helpful, and basically didn't believe me that I hadn't done something to mess up the settings. They even had me reset the settings to factory default and it was still messed up, so they finally just said I'd have to mail it to the factory. I thought I would offer the pictures here first and see if anyone has any suggestions before I send our only currently "working" digital camera to Illinois.
Here are the links. Notice the purple book, 3rd from the left, and also the shelf the book is sitting on in both pictures.
http://www.marchanson.com/images/with_s30.jpg
http://www.marchanson.com/images/with_a520.jpg
Would love to hear comments or suggestions. If you've seen this happen before let me know what it was.
Thanks.
Marc
P.S. I should add that both pictures were taken in "AUTO" mode on the respective cameras.