Noisy photos..

Howdy,

I often take pictures of birds, and I find that all of the pictures that I take of them always come out noisy and a little blurred. I'm using the fujifilm finepix s700. At full optical zoom (10x) and with the birds about 30 ft. away, they come out very small on the final photo; they maybe only cover 100 by 100 pixels. Can someone please explain to me why my photos of birds are noisy? i.e. can you recomend me certain camera settings to clear up these shots? Anything helps, thanks.

 

If you set the ISO to 100 or 200, the photos shouldn't come out noisy.

 

Well I also tried to take the photos in AUTO mode; because I think it finds the best settings to that the noise is reduced; but that didn't help. Well...it's not so much the noise I guess, it's really just the clarity that's the problem. The final photos are not clear at all (after I've cropped them). They always come out blurry and it's hard to see details on the bird. What am I doing wrong because I've seen other pictures taken with the same camera that have great clarity???? (pictures of birds that is)

 

blargmob,

Maybe you could try using a tripod, or at the very least a monopod, as the s700 does not have image stabilization. Hand holding a 10x lens at full zoom can be pretty tricky.

 

As obvious as this sounds (and not to insult your intelligence... ), it sounds like you simply need to get closer. If you're not picking up details, the obvious answer is to get closer.

The monopod/tripod suggestion is also a good one: as rp2s said, without IS, you're going to have trouble getting sharp shots at full zoom without extremely fast shutter speeds.

dr

 

Image stabilization? I think my s700 has that..There is a wheel setting called Image Stabilization. It's a picture of a guy and his shoulders with his body kinda shaking. Is that it?

 

I believe the S700 has digital IS, which just boosts ISO (which will only make the shots noisier).

dr

 

I believe it's called "Picture Stabilization mode" which boosts the ISO in order to produce a sharp photo (by allowing a faster shutter speed) at the expense of greater image noise. This may be what you're experiencing, as this Fuji camera does not use the Super-CCD sensor.

 

So if I'm getting this right: my fuji s700 has the wrong type of image stabilization, therefore it's harder to capture clear-closeup shots. Correct? And what mode would you recomend? Right now I'm using Aperature priority mode with high speed shooting on. Is this suitible?