What can I expect from a cheap digital camera?

December 19, 2008 10:29 AM

I bought a digital camera yesterday, and am not too pleased with it. But am I being too critical?

I got a Fujifilm J110W, a cheap 10 megapixel camera. At 100% viewing on a computer screen, the image looks slightly grainy. Zoom in even more and it starts to look pretty bad -- lots of noise, jaggies, and so on. I can make the quality better by forcing a lower ISO speed, but that isn't always practical.

For my sins, I know a lot about digital cameras, and had hoped to get a cheap point and click this time around. I knew the quality wouldn't be top notch, although I didn't expect it to be quite this bad.

I'm thinking of taking it back and exchanging it for another camera of the same price, but am I likely to be just as disappointed? Are any cameras going to offer decent close-scrutiny picture quality at such a low price level?

posted by deeper red to sports, hobbies, & recreation (28 comments total)

You might be better served by switching to a lower megapixel camera with image stabilization, like one of the Canon Powershots. Less megapixels hides some sins of the crummy lenses, and the image stabilization lets you use a lower ISO which reduces grain.

The other question is what you need a 10 megapixel image for. In my experience, most of the flaws of the image get marginalized when you reduce it for web use, or print it out. The only thing you really need a high resolution image for is to do very tight crops, and no compact camera is going to do great at that. (Or I suppose you could be shooting magazine covers or blowing things up to 24x36 but you shouldn't be using a compact camera for that.)
posted by smackfu at 10:44 AM on December 19, 2008

I would seriously start at cnet reviews. They haven't steered us wrong yet. We followed their recommendation for a digital camera that was a little more expensive than what you want to spend and both the pluses and minuses in the review were dead on accurate.
posted by Kimberly at 10:45 AM on December 19, 2008

What ISO are you shooting at where you notice the grain? I'm asking because even on my Canon XSi, I start to notice grain at ISO 400 and above. You could try running a noise reduction program like NoiseNinja in post to remove the noise and see where this gets you.
posted by smalls at 10:46 AM on December 19, 2008

Have you gone into the settings and checked the "image quality" or JPEG compression?

And when you're shopping for cameras, you might want to check out what these guys have to say. More megapixels does not necessarily mean better a better picture.
posted by dunkadunc at 10:47 AM on December 19, 2008

Okay, so it's noisy at 100%. But what about in actual prints? Or at more 'normal' screen sizes?

Zooming in further than 100% is useful sometimes for photoshopping, but why would you ever actually view an image that close?

It'd also help if we knew what ISO levels you're talking about, but most cheap P&S cameras get iffy very fast - 400 and up, usually. But in good lighting you shouldn't really have a problem.
posted by Tomorrowful at 10:51 AM on December 19, 2008

It's hard to say what you can reasonably expect for that price because you don't say what the price is, and I can't find anyone selling that camera.

If you spend a little time on a site like DPReview.com looking at sample images, you can reach your own conclusion. In general though, pretty much all of the compact point&shoot cameras have the same pixel density, and will probably have pretty similar inherent noise levels. The big difference is in how the cameras handle noise reduction. Different vendors approaches may be more or less pleasing to your eye.

In the end though, these things can't come close to the quality of a DSLR. Pixel peeping is just a recipe for unhappyness and has little to do with the way most people are actually going to see digital photos most of the time.
posted by Good Brain at 11:00 AM on December 19, 2008

100% on a miniature sensor such as your camera has is tiny. LIke, mites on a gnat's pubic hair tiny. Of *course* it's gonna be grainy at 100%. And what isn't grainy is diffracted through a little-bitty lens.

I shoot with a Canon 5d. I bought my wife a point-and-shoot. When I first looked at the shots from it, I was exasperated; but then I realized what it was, and got over it.
posted by notsnot at 11:01 AM on December 19, 2008

Zooming in above 100% on an image is always going to cause the image to look bad. That's the whole point of zooming in more than 100%; you want to zoom in close enough to see individual pixels for photo editing.

If you are just looking at the image there is no good reason to zoom in more than 100%.
posted by Justinian at 11:01 AM on December 19, 2008

With RGB mosaic technology (which is everything except Sigma's cameras with Foveon sensors) you will never get super high quality at 100% zoom. One solution to this is to add more megapixels! If things don't look okay at 50% zoom (2.5 megapixels) or print okay at like 15x10, I would then start worrying.

And if you zoom past 100% you will always get jaggies (or blurriness) because you're no looking at data the camera took, you're looking your image viewing software making up extra info.
posted by aubilenon at 11:02 AM on December 19, 2008

Regarding the ISO levels where this is a problem, it's noticeable from 64 ISO upwards. The camera has a semi-manual mode where you can set some camera settings, including ISO.

I took some test shots of a scene outdoors. It's been raining all day here, so poor light, but at 64 ISO I was able to get a reasonable shutter speed and avoid blur at the wide-angle lens setting.

At 64 ISO, at 100% viewing on a screen, you just notice slight grain/noise. But it would have to be pointed out to you, and you'd probably say, "Oh yeah! Well, it's not so bad."

At 100 ISO (100% viewing etc.) you'd spot the grain/noise yourself if you looked closely. Angled lines in the shot look jaggedy.

At 200 ISO, it's definitely noticeable.

At 400 ISO, it's a case of -- "Why does it look so bad?"

At 800 ISO, it's starting to look like a badly tuned television set. You're suspecting that the camera might have a fault.

At 1600 ISO it's just bad. I suspect if you printed an image even at a small size, you'd notice the grain/noise.

I've just been reading some reviews of cameras at a similar price range, and it looks like this is a common problem. Some cameras include noise reduction that remove some of the noise at the expense of fuzziness. It might be that Fujifilm just don't bother with noise reduction.
posted by deeper red at 11:14 AM on December 19, 2008

Two things about point & shoot cameras:

First, most point and shoot cameras tend to overestimate how much ISO is needed for a shoot when in automatic mode.

And second, using any ISO over 200 will make the pictures look grainy and bad unless you have a top notch camera.
posted by Memo at 11:14 AM on December 19, 2008

Could you upload some pictures from your camera? It would help judging if its normal for the price-range or if the camera actually sucks.
posted by Memo at 11:16 AM on December 19, 2008

Could you upload some pictures from your camera?

I've actually deleted the test pics from earlier. But there's a sample image at the Fujifilm website. It's taken on a nice sunny day and I've checked the EXIF and found it's at 64 ISO, but you can see what I'm talking about in the green foliage behind the flowers:

http://www.fujifilm.com/products/digital_cameras/j/finepix_j110w/sample_images/index.html

As I type this, I'm learning more by reading several reviews of cameras at similar price points to mine. It looks like the standard trick is to use noise reduction, but this makes things very fuzzy. Look at this sample image from a Ricoh R8, which has a similar spec:

http://a.img-dpreview.com/reviews/RicohR8/samples/specifics/R0010428.JPG

The forest floor looks very odd -- like the "Oil Painting" Photoshop filter has been applied.

I'm starting to wonder if my camera's lack of noise correction is a blessing in disguise. I can fix it myself, however I wish in Photoshop.
posted by deeper red at 11:28 AM on December 19, 2008

I was on the hunt for a digicam for my dad recently. After reading a whole bunch of reviews all over the net I settled on the Canon IXUS80 aka Canon SD1100IS. Its an 8 megapixel cam. Almost all the reviews stated that the image quality was quite good.

I haven't had the time to really check out how good the image quality really is, though. My dad seems quite happy with it.

Here's a picture that was taken with it. Perhaps that'll give you some idea how good/bad the quality is.

One way of checking out the general quality of the pictures a camera takes is to find it on the flickr cameras page and have a quick look at a bunch of pictures taken with it.
posted by ogami at 11:33 AM on December 19, 2008

deeper red: "I'm starting to wonder if my camera's lack of noise correction is a blessing in disguise. I can fix it myself, however I wish in Photoshop."

Yes, it is. There are two approaches to dealing with small sensors in-camera. Lots of noise reduction, giving a 'nicer' picture sacrificing picture detail (Hi Sony!), and almost no noise reduction leaving the grain in hands of the user (Canon). Personally, I prefer the second as it allows me to choose what I want to do with the picture.
posted by Memo at 11:41 AM on December 19, 2008

I don't think there is a consumer P&S digicam that doesn't do noise reduction in the camera. I think the signs of it are pretty obvious in that Fuji sample image you linked to, its just that, like I said, different vendors use different approaches.

It's amazing how bad things have gotten. Even at reduced sizes, so many photos look like they've been rune through some sort of effects filter.
posted by Good Brain at 11:44 AM on December 19, 2008

Wow, that sure is muddy looking in your second link. I much prefer Canon cameras as they give me a sharp crisp result. I'm using the SD1100IS as well and it's godly. Highly highly recommend. Here's one shot I've taken with it.
posted by Meagan at 11:51 AM on December 19, 2008

Something to try, that might or might not help. That camera appears to support several lower resolutions. Turn your resolution setting down to 2592 x 1944, which is 5 megapixels. That may seem counter-intuitive, but there is a very credible argument that higher numbers of pixels on small sensors increases noise more than it helps resolution.

I print 11x14 photos all the time from 5 megapixel files with absolutely no problem. Try it with a few identical test subjects and see what happens.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 12:07 PM on December 19, 2008

They all look pretty crappy. I would suggest shooting at lower resolution (5MP or so) if you can. That helps a lot and since the noise is so high you can't use 10MP anyway. The Noise Ninja PS plugin can work wonders too but it's costly and offsets the camera cheapness.
posted by chairface at 1:01 PM on December 19, 2008

Fuzzy Skinner: "Something to try, that might or might not help. That camera appears to support several lower resolutions. Turn your resolution setting down to 2592 x 1944, which is 5 megapixels. That may seem counter-intuitive, but there is a very credible argument that higher numbers of pixels on small sensors increases noise more than it helps resolution."

Sadly, there are cameras that resize the picture instead of, you know, doing the sensible thing: capturing it at the selected size.
posted by Memo at 1:23 PM on December 19, 2008

Sadly, there are cameras that resize the picture instead of, you know, doing the sensible thing: capturing it at the selected size.

Eww. Ugh. Good info.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 1:47 PM on December 19, 2008

A couple of points; all unfortunately peripheral to your quandary but offered nonetheless...

Film has grain. Digital original images have noise. Noise isn't grain.

When you're actually viewing pictures on screen to see and appreciate them, you won't be viewing a portion of the image at 100%; you'll be looking at the entire image. Don't be a "pixel peeper" for no good reason.

If the noise in your higher ISO images when viewed to fit your screen or at print sizes you make drives you nuts, then consider another camera. Otherwise, learn to appreciate your pictures for their content and for the moments you've captured, and don't fret about image noise that's only bothersome at a 100% actual pixel view.
posted by imjustsaying at 2:52 PM on December 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

Right now dpreview.com is doing a holiday gift guide and they have a Budget Camera Group Test, Ultra Compact, Premium Compact, and Enthusiast Compact, with one more set to come, with real world shots. Fujifilm seems to consistently come in the bottom tier of these groups, and Canon tends to do very well consistently. Ken Rockwell is also a huge fan of the Canon compact camera line, and all of my friends are very happy with theirs. If you get specific models of Canon cameras you can add the CHDK firmware and get raw files and all kinds of other bonus features that will give you a huge edge over other compact camera lines.
posted by hindmost at 3:37 PM on December 19, 2008

deeper red- there is no more information past 100% zoom. Even at 100%, digital photos are going to be noisy. You can't change reality by being offended.

If you don't think the camera is doing what it is supposed to, turn it in for another one.
posted by gjc at 5:46 PM on December 19, 2008

Adding on to what everyone else says, I've been using high-end digital cameras for a few years now (I've worked with everything from Canon and Nikon except the latest round of cameras) and I've never seen a file, zoomed to 100%, that looks good. In fact, I'm often amazed at how bad it looks, compared to how the same picture looks when printed in a newspaper, magazine, or photo print. The only time you'll see a picture zoomed to 100% is when you specifically zoom it to 100%; most prints, web usage, viewing on the computer, etc., will be at much less than that.
posted by msbrauer at 6:56 PM on December 19, 2008

Of course if you zoom in past 100% the pixels are easy to see!

Make an 8x10 print and see if you like it.
posted by Brian Puccio at 9:12 PM on December 19, 2008

I am a total Canon partisan. Very consistent quality. On my third. Have recommended them to many friends and family members and everyone has been happy with them.
posted by flotson at 11:33 PM on December 19, 2008

Thanks everybody for the answers. If anybody is still interested, I decided to stick with the camera. I might possibly have been able to get better image quality elsewhere, but from reading around, and the responses here, it sounds like compact digital cameras are fundamentally limited. My camera produces rough shots that possibly lack strong noise correction but I prefer the option of correcting them myself in Photoshop.
posted by deeper red at 7:34 AM on December 21, 2008