Need feeback and help with my A80 pics

[doug00027]

Hello all,

I'm relatively new to digital photography and read heaps of reviews on the A70 and A80, and decided to go with the A80 based on features, non-proprietry memory media and batteries life.

I've been taking shots and attached them to my homepage at:

http://www.geocities.com/jla73au/camera.html


Overall I'm very impressed with the A80, however I've noticed the following and would like to hear from anyone who can help:

1. On some of the pics when I've zoomed out, the objects of the edges of the photo are a little blurred compared to the centre. Is this normal? See pic 1440kb.jpg on my homepage and notice the pot-plants and tree on the right are softer than the tree in the centre even though they're in the same depth of view.

2. I know the A series give generally softer pics than other cameras but are my pics (such as 1188kb.jpg on my home page) okay? Objects like the moving tram and people when viewed at 100% don't look as sharp as I thought they should. When I view the pics at say 50% on my PC, they look great. Am I being too picky since I've never seen photos this up-close and detailed before?

I haven't compressed or retouched the pics, so please be patient when viewing them.

I generally use P mode and stay perfectly still when I take the shot. (I've also taken some fantastic pics of my cats - will post shortly).

3. Are there any protectors avaliable in Australia for the LCD screen? It's a pain to fold it back everytime you put the camera away. I don't want to use the clear films used on PDAs as the adhesive might damage it.

4. The AF assist lamp I've found to be too weak to be any use and Canon went cheap on the low resolution in movie mode (versus the A70) :(

Does anyone agree?

5. I've found the manual focus not really great, even when using the MF assist to zoom in on the object. How do you focus in low-light conditions when the A80 can't auto focus on an object?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[stopbath]

It seems you have a back focus problem. If you look at all the samples, the lower right corner is never sharp (one could be that the car is moving, but the other two are of lawn - the left side lawn is decent, whereas the right has no detail, and is really blurry.)

The trolly seems decently ok, it's moving, and it may not be the subject the camera focused on... The building behind it seems sharper.

Yes the focus assist may only help in border line situations. It is 'assist' and is not powerful enough to provide enough light to manage in lots of dark situations. Really, I think this is a weak spot in the camera. They could have popped in a more expensive system. Likely would have raised the price by 5 or 20 bucks but would have been nice!

For manual focus in the dark, use as small of an aperture as you can and guess the distance. 2 meters, 1 meter (whatever) and dial it in and go. Usually the guess is good enough.

I don't have a LCD protector other than the camera case. I have a minor scratch on it, but rarely 'see' it.

The higher resolution of the movie mode on the A70 is a by product of CCD itself. If the makers of the CCD used in the A80 had designed the high res movie mode, you would have gotten it. Better to have 4 meg stills, then high res movie clips! And you've got less noise at ISO 400 too than the A70.

So, do some tripod tests, parallel to the wall and shoot a sheet of newspaper (or printed wallpaper) in wide angle and telephoto (wide open aperture, super fine compression, maximum resolution). If the image on lower right is blurry while all the other print is sharp, you've got a defective alignment, and that camera should be returned for replacement or repair...

[cincophoto]

use a tripod to stop the blur, check out mine with the A70 at www.cincophoto.vzz.net

[Bodryn]

I tried to look at your pictures but after downloading part of your first photo I got this message:

"Sorry, this site is temporarily unavailable!
The web site you are trying to access has exceeded its allocated data transfer. Visit our help area for more information.
Access to this site will be restored within an hour. Please try again later."

"Need extra data transfer? Sign up for GeoCities Pro or Webmaster. Learn more."

Could it be that they want more money out of you? Not nice, not nice....