In a mess with fz 30 poor results

[manitou210]

I guess I have to much camera and don't understand how to use
I bought this camera to use to shoot pic,s at twighlight, just as sun going down at distances, I set digital zoom at 4x and put camera in auto focus and 75% of photo's are baddly blured and 25% just average to poor, what am I doing wrong or should I take it back, could it be my card, maybe try another, camera works good on macro for close ups for ebay etc.
any help would be nice.
httphttp://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c326/manitou210/P1010007.jpg://

[David Metsky]

TURN OFF DIGITAL ZOOM. It's not going to help you at all in these situations, or in most situations. All it does is crop and expand the results, you can get better results attempting that in your computer.

It looks like you were taking a shot in low light with full zoom, which means that little light was getting to the sensor. The camera bumped up the ISO to compensate for low light and that results in noise. Your best bet is to lock ISO at an acceptable level (100) and try for a well braced fast shot.

The memory card has nothing to do with this.

Did I mention to turn off digital zoom?

-dave-

[JohnK]

Unfortunately low light (twlight) performance with the FZ30 is very poor. You'll probably need to use a tripod to get sharp pictures at that time. Looking at the EXIF info for the photo the exposure time was only 1/6, which explains why the photo is blurry, most people (me included) can't hold steady enough with that slow a shutter speed. Digital zoom and ISO 200 don't help much either. It also looks like you were using the Landscape scene mode, is that correct? I haven't tried that one but I can't imagine it would be the best setting for capturing wildlife. You might want to give Apeture Priority (A) mode a try next time you're out.

I would suggest trying the auto bracket feature, under or over exposing the picture might help, disable the digital zoom for now and try when the light is better and/or use a tripod, monopod, treebranch, anything to get a good steady hold for those long exposures.

I took a similar photo yesterday morning among some trees, well past daybreak but the sun wasn't above the trees, no digital zoom, full optical zoom, ISO 200 1/60th exposure time with the FZ30.

http://lh4.google.com/handcannons/RNDCvpFhABI/AAAAAAAAAAs/hcrctWGDOL0/P1000820_640x480.JPG

[genece]

This is just what the others said..I am only saying it again so you do not miss the main part.

Turn off digital zoom!!!!!!!

After you see how good the camera does you may wish to use it at times, but it needs plenty of light for good results.

If you need more zoom use the EZ Tele mode, but first just put the camera on 8mp and the best JPEG setting.

Then Put the camera in P mode and in the menu pick 1 area fast focus.

Oh and put the IS on mode 2....some people swear by mode 1 but lets try mode 2.

Go outside and take a few pictures in good light......any better?....Good !.

Now just experiment a little and see if there are some things that work better for you than others.

Now that your getting good photos try the EZ on a photo such as that deer....but lets not use digital zoom yet....Get a couple nice pictures of the deer.....good ...now try anything you want because you now know what to compare the results to.

You should have no trouble getting a photo at least this good as my wife took this at 3EZ and pretty close to full zoom (540mm)and she does do nothing but push the shutter button.

http://photos.imageevent.com/grc6/fontsize3fz30font/fz30goestoalaska/large/P1150084%20_Large_.JPG

[gwhizkids]

I reemphasize what the others have already said about digital zoom. You can get up to nearly 20x zoom without going digital, so its unlikely you'll ever need to use it. Instead, as John put it above, if you are taking photos at a long zoom regularly, invest in a small tripod to hold the camera steady. Or if you don't want to spend for a tripod, use a small beanbag and / or prop the camera up on a fence rail -- in short, anything to keep the lens from moving. The image stabilization is great, but even it has its limations, esp. at long zooms.

[manitou210]

Thanks Dave, John, Genece & Gwhizkid for respones for my plea for help

John K- Yes landscape, Apeture Priority (A) ???

Genece : EZ Telemode ??
IS Mode 2 ??
3EZ your wife used ?? sorry I don't know these terms or how to find them.

Gwhizkid :how do I get camera to almost 20x with out digital zoom

[John_Reed]

Thanks Dave, John, Genece & Gwhizkid for respones for my plea for help

John K- Yes landscape, Apeture Priority (A) ???

Genece : EZ Telemode ??
IS Mode 2 ??
3EZ your wife used ?? sorry I don't know these terms or how to find them.

Gwhizkid :how do I get camera to almost 20x with out digital zoom
That's an EZ one to answer. Use the camera in 3MP EZ mode, and the zoom is 19.2X (668mm) with no digital zoom. If you want more zoom than that, you can screw on an Olympus TCON-17 adapter, which multiplies the focal length by 1.7X to get you out to 900mm optical zoom. Even though the others are right about how the effects of digital zoom will be to exacerbate your "softness," your shot really is beyond the normal limits of the handheld FZ30, with or without digital zoom. I would be remiss, though, to let this topic pass without dredging up one of my best low-light results from the FZ30:
http://john-reed.smugmug.com/photos/39690793-L.jpg
That one was taken at full zoom with the FZ30 in 8MP mode, PLUS TCON-17, at 1/5 of a second. Don't ask me how I did it, but it was handheld.

[genece]

Thanks Dave, John, Genece & Gwhizkid for respones for my plea for help

John K- Yes landscape, Apeture Priority (A) ???
Do not use these scene modes until you get a better understanding how this camera works....you would be better off putting the camera in the red A mode.
But I would suggest you use Program mode as it allows you to make some adjustments.
Genece : EZ Telemode ??
IS Mode 2 ??
3EZ your wife used ?? sorry I don't know these terms or how to find them.

John Reed explained the 3 EZ zoom but its on page 34 and 35 of theUSA manual. And page 85 explains how to set it in the menu.

Also IS stands for Image stabilization and I feel mode 2 is the best one to use but not everyone agrees .....but use one of the modes.
Pg 56 of the manual

Gwhizkid :how do I get camera to almost 20x with out digital zoom

And that 3 EZ mode sets the camerea at full zoom to be 669mm which is about 19X ...and there is a way to get over 700mm but lets not worry about that now.

And leave me say one more thing... I am not as big a fan of the EZ modes as I once was ....but its much better than digital zoom.....You would do better to get the ability to take good photos at 8mp size and then move on the the other stuff the FZ30 can do.

[JohnK]

Thanks Dave, John, Genece & Gwhizkid for respones for my plea for help

John K- Yes landscape, Apeture Priority (A) ???

Genece : EZ Telemode ??
IS Mode 2 ??
3EZ your wife used ?? sorry I don't know these terms or how to find them.

Gwhizkid :how do I get camera to almost 20x with out digital zoom

Turn the knob on the right/top of the camera to A, the knob with the red A, P, A, S, M, movie, SCN2, SCN1 and play. A mode lets you adjust the apeture and automatically adjusts the shutter speed for you.

IS Mode 2 is image stabilization mode 2, push the button by the hand near the shutter release that will let you set it to Off, Mode1 or Mode2. Off is obvious, Mode 1 has image stabilzation on all the time, Mode 2 has it on only when the shutter is pressed. Many people think it does a better job in mode 2, I don't know either way but I use mode 2.

John

[BonjiB]

It's nearly impossible to hand hold a shot at 1/6th of a second and full zoom. I really think that's your MAIN problem. If you want to get into RAW you can salvage an otherwise horridly underexposed picture. Adds more grain but hey, at least you got the shot. Flick that bad boy over into raw and set your camera to shutter priority (TV) and set the shutter speed no lower than 1/30 which is 30 in the camera. I can usually hand hold a full zoom shot at 1/30 in IS mode 2. The only time i use mode 1 is in movie mode or when i'm panning (following a moving subject.) Also don't set your ISO any higher than 200. 200 is about as high as is really usable with the fz30. I think shutter speed here is your primary problem. Leaving the camera to it's own devices will usually result in it dropping the shutter speed to an unusable level cuz that's what it 'thinks' is the right thing to do. Then when you import the raw file into photoshop just bump your exposure there. Bumping exposure with software looks a lot better on a raw than it does a jpeg since the data hasn't already been processed once by the camera. It'll still be grainy but your detail will be there. The BEST way to do it though is a tripod. Use your slower shutter speeds to make sure enough light is hitting that sensor and just hope your subject doesn't move around too much in 1/6th of a second. If it's a moving subject then forget it, it won't work anyways. About the whole EZ zoom thing. All that really does is use a smaller portion of the imaging sensor (which is why it drops the megapixels) which is effectively the same as cropping the image on your computer. I'll say it too, DON'T USE DIGITAL ZOOM! I don't know why they add this to cameras, it never yields satisfactory results. All it does is crop in and then blow up. It destroys detail.You're better off cropping an 8 megapixel image down to 2 megapixels then just printing from the 2megapixel file than you are resizing that 2 back up to 8 for printing. Hope this helps. Good luck