A540 noisy images

Hi I'm new here. My parents recently purchased a Canon A540 and brought it to me to try out. The images appear very noisy and at times unclear. They are better closer up than they are when the lens is zoomed. Whenever the camera is zoomed, the icon indicationg slow shutter speed due to not enough light comes on (even when I had the camera focussed on the window at noon!). I have tried setting the ISO to 200 instead of using automatic, in case the camera was upping the ISO and icreasing the noise. I was trying it out at midday in my living room where there is a big bright window. Lighting I actually choose to shoot in frequently with my P&S and now my new SLR. My P&S was an Olympus, so I am not as familiar with this camera. Does anyone have any suggestions? Is this a typical problem with this camera, or should we try something different...or should we be returning it?

Thanks so much!

Cristi

First, Welcome to the forum.
I’ve had my A540 for a couple of months and haven’t had any problem with the images even at full zoom. The only problem I have is with the camera shake icon comes on whether it’s on a tripod or not.
Since I don’t have a problem with the images I took a look at the manual. It talks about shutter speed on page 45. http://www.usa.canon.c​om …egoryid=145&mod​elid=12942
then click on Support and Download Library to download the Basic and Advanced manual.
The only thing it says is about setting the shutter speed in TV mode. You might try going to the menu and camera settings and select Reset Camera. This will reset the camera back to the original factory settings.
If you are using the zoom it can go up to 16x. 4x Optical and 4x Digital. At 16x it is real grainy but for all still images I select Large format and either Fine or SuperFine for image quality.
Since I am not sure exactly what the problem is, if the problem continues you might have to exchange it for another A540. Even though it is new there may be a defect in the CCD image sensor that is causing the problem.
Good luck and I look forward to seeing the post of some of the images from your new SLR.

Thanks for your reply! We took the camera off of AiAF and things improved dramatically. It's good to hear that others are enjoying this camera; I'm hoping it will be a great one for my parents!