why did my pictures come out like this...

[kritikal]

i tried fooling around with the settings during the concert, but couldnt get away from the grainy, spotty effects. how do i get rid of that. and it was only after the concert did i think about changing the ISO settings. what does ISO actually do??? and im using a canon sd600.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/kritikalz/IMG_1125.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/kritikalz/IMG_1107.jpg

[lhoney2]

You need to post correct hyperlinks.

go to the page where your pictures are at, then select the URL in the address box. Right click, and select copy.

To add the hyperlink to your message, edit your message, then choose the globe with the chain icon, click in the text box, then right click, and select Paste.

[OpenC]

ISO makes the camera more sensitive to light: at higher ISOs, you don't need so long an exposure time to get a correct exposure as you do at lower ISOs. The trade off is that image quality degrades as ISO gets higher (although it's not necessarily always that bad: my 30D is more than acceptable at 800).

I'm not sure what all the floating dust in your shots is (unless, of course, it's dust), but the reason they're soft and not focused is that it was dark when you were taking them. Auto focus can't do a very good job when there's no light for it to work with. Shutter speeds slow down so it's hard to keep things still.

Simple as that, really.. it's not easy to take good pictures at that kind of event.

[kritikal]

so could my lens be dusty???

[OpenC]

Could be. But if it was your lens, you'd probably see a very similar pattern of interference on every shot, which doesn't look to be the case.

[lhoney2]

My first reaction to those shots were that your lens is dirty. Does the lens look clean to you?

[Box Brownie]

Interesting!This is only the second time I have seen such artifacts. My first digicam was the Kodak DC210 Plus, this is a sub 1MB camera and for most 'everyday' shots was/still is fine.

But on a trip to Spain in 2003 I noticed the following:-

Indoor shots taken without flash were OK but noisy.
Indoor shots taken with flash showed the artifacts you have shown.

My thoughts is that it is not due to dust on the lens but a combination of the sensor size, dust in the lens mechanism/structure & the onboard flash being in such close proximity with the lens that any close subject will 'bounce' some diffracted light off the dust in the lens and because of the small sensor size the DoF is great that the dust is visible but only under a very specific set of conditions - not forgetting dust motes in the air itself hence the range of sizes of the artifacts and their apparent distances/sharpness varying in the image.

The above is pure speculation on my part as I have not tried to replicate it under more controlled tests.

:)

[René Damkot]

Lots of dust / smoke in the air, being lit by the flash.
A dirty lens would show as a loss of contrast, not as dust particles.

[Jon, The Elder]

Rene's got it.

[Hellashot]

Either the lens is really dirty or there was smoke in the club.

[Aquaman]

Jon and Rene are correct. I agonized over the same problem with my P&S a year or two ago. It is the interaction of auto-mode, low light, dust/smoke and flash. I think it is common with point and shoots where the flash is harsh and located close to the lens. When I use my point and shoot, I shoot wide open in AV mode when I am faced with those situtions.

[Raphael Emond]

It's the same effect as to shoot using flash in night when it's snowing.
And it's why you can't really use flash for club shots. Smoke and dust particles
will bounce light back to the sensor. It has nothing to do with dust on the front element.

Use High ISO and fast glass. It's your only solution.