Is my camera defective?

[sadffffff]

Hi i just bought a Panasonic Lumix lz2 and it seems to be giving me an unacceptable ammount of noise. I even see some noise on the lcd screen when its sitting stationary on a table. taking pictures in a low lit auditorium resulted in pictures that looked like they were impressionist painted. This was on normal picture mode, I tried some other modes too with no better results. Ive attached some pictures (full resolution crops) of my concerns. the one with the windows XP logo looks sorta like what i was getting in the auditorium.

So is this normal or should i try to have it replaced? If this is normal im going to return it and buy something different.

Thanks for any help you can offer!

[emalvick]

You probably should ask on the Panasonic forum, only because a lot of people know how to deal with the noise there, but I'll offer some ideas to think about.

First, you want to be sure your camera is on as low of an iso setting as possible. Most digital cameras (non dslr varieties) give lots of noise at high iso. If you are taking photos in the full automatic mode, it may be choosing high iso settings in dark situations. Dark situations will be where the noise is usually greatest. I suggest setting it to iso 100 and taking the same shots and seeing how the noise compares.

Next, if you view an image at 100% on the screen, it is going to look a lot noiser than it would if you printed it out or even looked at it so that it fits on your screen. For some reason, the noise almost amplifies when on a monitor. It may be the monitor settings or it may be that the pixels aren't really that small.

Ultimately, you are going to find that the Panasonic may be a bit noisier than other brands. However, all brands are noisy and they will have minimal improvement over a Panasonic. They improvement may not even be visible to you.

The only way to have as little noise as possible is to buy a dslr because they use larger sensors, which makes them less noisy, or you can buy a less megapixel camera, which also tends to be less noisy. You can also use noise removal software like Neat Image and Noise Ninja to help reduce noise in your own terms (rather than internally on the camera like a lot of other cameras do).

It will be good to make a print or two of some of the images you think are too noisy and see if they are too noisy for you in print form. If they are, then try to find another camera. Just don't be too suprised if others are noisy unless you get a dsl.

However, Fuji does make some point and shoot type cameras that are less noisier. They still aren't as noise free as a dslr, but they are an improvement over all other point and shoot digital cameras.

Good Luck

[cdifoto]

I've never owned or used the Panasonics but my Fuji S7000 looked pretty much that way at ISO400...and worse yet at ISO800.

I would venture to say it's normal.

[timmciglobal]

Here are two images from my FZ-5 for example sake. Both ISO 80 outdoors, I don't think your noise issues are odd, depends on what ISO but the panasonic cam's are noisy. Made excelent 8x10's though out of them without issue. Crop from upper left of image.

http://pictures.divergentservices.com/iso80crop.jpg

http://pictures.divergentservices.com/iso80.jpg


Tim

[cdifoto]

Hey Tim...I'm curious...can you post a crop of the building somewhere? Maybe the stack so I can see the brick detail at full res?

[timmciglobal]

Here you go

Top and bottom of stack (obvious which is which so I won't say)

http://pictures.divergentservices.com/stacktop.jpg

http://pictures.divergentservices.com/stackbottom.jpg


Tim

[timmciglobal]

Also to note, these are straight out of the camera, no USM or other photoshop tricks applied.

Tim

[cdifoto]

That's not bad...but I wouldn't wanna go above ISO80 much! My Fuji was horrible...even my 8x10s were *splotchy* - especially when trying to reproduce skin tones - the noise was so bad I had to tell my sister I couldn't print 8x10s for her until I got a better camera. Fortunately I got the XT shortly after my nephew was born and sold the Fuji for nearly what I paid...after a full year and a half of ownership!

Made a great eBay pic camera though...lol.

[ktixx]

Try Noise Ninja (http://www.picturecode.com)or neat image (http://www.neatimage.com).
Ken

[sadffffff]

See thats the thing my camera takes wonderfull nice lighting outdoors pictures too. Its the indoors shots that were disapointing.

I went to a wal-mart and checked one out on display and its the same, so not defective I guess. The thing that bothers me about this is that I can compare it with my girlfriend's sister's 4mp 3x zoom olympus and my pictures are quite obviously inferior. Mostly due to the noise levels. the worst is on a solid color like the orange shirt and the black computer case, the noise gets to the point where it starts to look blotchy and bad even zoomed out. Also I was unable to take pictures of the decorated auditorium before the concert because everything I took was bad. It looked like someone painted it with a bunch of large brush dabs... So im guessing this camera has issues with low light as well.

Its a real shame because i was really excited about this camera's specs.
5mp and 6x optical zoom WITH image stabalization for ~$200, it was right up my ally. But it looks like I'll have to swallow the 15% restocking fee, and go back to hunting again. So few cameras that offer this much zoom for the size and MP and image stabaization was REALLY nice.