Unhappy w/my SD700 image quality

[me454555]

Bought one a few months ago and I mostly use it on automatic. I'm very unhappy w/the grainyness of the images and the overall softeness of the backgrounds. Would upgrading to an S3IS solve this problem or do I have to make the jump to a dSLR

[RebelRat]

Try it in Manual mode. It's pretty much like automatic mode, but, you have control of the ISO setting. The shots I get from my SD700 are mostly pretty good. Though, high ISO shots do get grainy. I try to keep it below ISO 200.

[nap]

Bought one a few months ago and I mostly use it on automatic. I'm very unhappy w/the grainyness of the images and the overall softeness of the backgrounds. Would upgrading to an S3IS solve this problem or do I have to make the jump to a dSLR

No, moving to an S3 IS will not solve the grain/noise problem.

[RebelRat]

RebelRat, did you use Photoshop to filter the photo? I am not sure if I have a defective camera, because I was really not expecting the image quality to be the way it turned out.

I will post some photos later today.


Eric

Yes, I Photoshopped it a little bit. Force of habit doing it for my pics from the DSLR.

[me454555]

No, moving to an S3 IS will not solve the grain/noise problem.

Is this b/c the sensor in the S3 is the same as the 700 IS? Will the manual controls allow me to smooth out some shots?

[duanegossett]

I've had an SD700 for a few months and made quite a lot of photos, and I agree- the image quality is not the best, especially compared to the SD550 that I had. The 550 had a better lens and bigger sensor, and made great photos. I'm taking a trip to Italy soon, and I want a camera with excellent image quality, so I'm buying an SD900. It has the better lens and bigger sensor, 10MP, Digic 3, and is supposed to be right up there with the G7 in image quality.

[BowerR64]

Yeah im telling you that 1/1.8" sensor is a good one. Why they went back to the smaller one after the SD550, ill never know. They had a nice progression going then they threw in a curve ball and went backwards. Ide like to see some compairisons between the 550 and the 900.

[MiqueMaus]

I've had my SD700 for a couple months now and for the size and price, the picture quality has been wonderful. Like people have said, use the camera in Manual mode so you can control ISO to tone down noise grain. There's also a difference between "sharp" and "out of focus" so keep that in mind.

Here's my deviant art with a lot of pictures that I've taken with the SD700. It's really a great camera. (http://miquemaus.deviantart.com/)