C-765 blurring

[Doug]

I have been using an Olympus D-50 for a few months, and am happy with it except I wanted more zoom. So I just purchased an Olympus C-765 with a 10x zoom. But I get a lot more blurring with this camera, expecially with indoor shots. I just tried to take pictures at my son's basketball game a couple days ago, and almost all the shots are blurred or grainy. Is this typical with all ultra zoom cameras, or only the C-765. I am thinking about returning it and looking into something else. Thanks in advance for everybody's help.

[John_Reed]

Originally Posted by Doug

I have been using an Olympus D-50 for a few months, and am happy with it except I wanted more zoom. So I just purchased an Olympus C-765 with a 10x zoom. But I get a lot more blurring with this camera, expecially with indoor shots. I just tried to take pictures at my son's basketball game a couple days ago, and almost all the shots are blurred or grainy. Is this typical with all ultra zoom cameras, or only the C-765. I am thinking about returning it and looking into something else. Thanks in advance for everybody's help.

You're voicing a common complaint about cameras used for shooting indoor sporting events or concerts. You're trying to shoot long-zoom photos in relatively low light of moving subjects. So you're likely to experience motion blur, either by the subjects or by you, the shooter, or both. You can improve things by increasing shutter speed, but only so much within the "consumer" camera spectrum. To maximize shutter speed:

1) Use highest ISO. Shots will likely be "grainy," but this is a form of digital "noise" which can usually be corrected with programs like "Noise Ninja." You said that some of your shots were "grainy." Were they otherwise sharp? If so, they're recoverable.

2) Use maximum Aperture. For the the C-765, this is f3.7 at full zoom. You may need to set Aperture priority to make that choice, but do that.

3) To minimize motion blur on the shooter's part, you may need to use a monopod, a tripod, at least some kind of stabilizing influence. You asked if these problems were common to long-zoom cameras, and they are. It turns out that if you're shooting handheld shots at long zoom, your shutter speed should be no slower than 1/focal length, which would put your minimum shutter speed at 1/400 of a second; I'll bet your shots were a lot slower than that?

If you're still disappointed in the C-765, you might consider trading it in on a Panasonic DMC-FZ3 camera, which has a faster, longer-zoom (420mm vs. 380mm equiv) lens, (f2.8 at full zoom) with an optical image stabilizer; this will at least give you help with shooter motion blur. Its high-ISO performance is comparable to, if not better, than the C-765, from what I've heard. Do some scouting around the Panasonic page on this forum to find examples of folks who've used the camera for sporting events.

The Panasonic cameras, starting with the FZ3 and up to the FZ20 (which is larger than the FZ3) represent about the fastest long zooms you can get in the consumer-level camera category. If you find that that still doesn't do the job for you, your next alternative is a much more expensive option - dSLRs, which can shoot photos at much higher ISOs, like 1600-3200 instead of 400 max. But wow, would you get sharp photos!

Good luck! I hope this was helpful.