When taking pictures outside, when the camera is set to “auto,” the pictures come out black. With some software on our computer, we can lighten it enough to see what it was a picture of, but it is very grainy, and shows no color except for some reds.
When she takes it off of auto and messes with the aperture size, it will take the picture, but everything is shaded blue and grainy.
When she takes pictures indoors, everything works fine.
Sorry, I don’t know enough about cameras to be more articulate than that.
Sounds like your metering system is shot.
See if there is a way to force a reset of the camera - some models have a hidden button that can be pressed with a paperclip.
Take the batteries out and let it sit for a few hours to do a reset.
Are the indoors pictures taken with a flash, or just at high ISO?
Otherwise, your metering system is indeed shot. It’s not something that you’ll be able to fix. If the camera is more then 2 years old or anything short of a very top of the line current model it won’t pay to fix it out of warranty. Cameras are disposable these days.
Will try. (The problem started several months ago and seems to have gotten a little worse lately, and we’ve changed the batteries several times since then, but we’ve never let it sit for a while between batteries so maybe that will make a difference.)
That when shooting with flash the camera knows how to set the exposure/metering. Often it uses default settings when the flash is on - so this is another piece of evidence that its metering system is shot.
True, but cameras have improved a lot in the past few years (except for low light performance) and gotten cheaper. I expect cameras to last 2-4 years.
Mine is doing somewhat the same thing. I have a Canon S2 IS and it’s getting the “black screen of death” where the mechanical iris in the lens gets stuck shut and when I do get the camera to work the preview and flashless shots get darker and darker after each shot until after 4-5 shots I need to reset the camera and the cycle repeats.
This is a dead camera, which is a shame as otherwise it was a dandy camera. Fie on Canon for not recalling the S2 as there’s hundreds of complaints on the net of this same problem.
Are you looking for a point and shoot or a SLR with lenses and stuff? For p&s, I’d say Canon SD870, 990 or similar. I have a G10 that I love, it’s a bit more than your budget but if you find one used, snap it up.
I really like my Canon 590. Lots of features but still easy to use if you don’t want to mess around. I like to play with the settings, my wife just wants to point and shoot. It is great for both of us. It’s about $120-$140 USD.
I have an older 3MP at work and liked it so much I bought a new 8MP for Christmas.
You can add some lenses to it also if you want.
You can buy them on Newegg. I also really like Newegg.com for online electronics. Fast shipping, nice return policy, low prices
There’s a few different categories of cameras now to fit your needs. Sub-compact cameras that are super easy to carry around, long zoom cameras that give > 15x optical zoom but are quite large, prosumer grade which are a cross between point and shoot and digital SLR, and finally digital SLR which gives you the greatest flexibility in creating your shots but requires skill and practice to use to it’s fullest potential. Entry level digital SLRs are now available that can act like a point and shoot but I don’t know how well they work.
For < $300 you’re pretty much in the point and shoot range, but you could find some deals out there on older hardware if you’re thinking about a SLR.
Personally I’m thinking about replacing my failing S2 IS with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28. It has an 18x optical zoom and can take high def (720p) movies.
I strongly recommend you visit http://www.dpreview.com and hit up their Holiday 08 Group Tests. The data is only a few months old and should give you a good idea of what you’re looking for.
Is there any chance you have some sort of exposure compensation mode set to on? Even if you did, that doesn’t explain the flash, and usually exposure comp tops out at -2 stops.
Can you try a few photos in manual mode? This way you can determine if it’s just something in the metering that has gone awry or something else.
Better yet, is there a way you can post the three images you mentioned, so I can have a look at the EXIF (embedded settings information)?
As for what kind of camera we’d be looking for if we have to get a new one, the camera that I’ve been talking about in this thread is a Fuji finepix S-series model. From dpreview.com, it looks like that’s what the site calls an “SRL-like” format camera. Probably a new camera would be of this type as well, just because it’s the kind my wife is familiar with.
She’d actually really like an SLR camera where you can use different lenses and stuff someday, but it looks like that’s just not in our budget right now.
I’ll know more about camera types later. She knows about this stuff, not me.
I use Photoshop to look at EXIF. There’s EXIF readers out there somewhere, and I think Picasa should have something allowing you to read the EXIF.
Well, without looking at the EXIF, I can tell the white balance is set to Tungsten. And this is what I see in the EXIF. It says Light Source: Tungsten.
There’s your blue (I’m looking at 2009 march walk023.JPG).
The exposure info says the camera was set to Aperture Priority (this is not a full auto mode.) The exposure is 1/480, f/6.4, ISO 100. The exposure for a day like that should be in that ballpark–you’re maybe a stop under. I’m looking at the histogram, and you do have a good spread of values. It’s the white balance that is throwing things to shit. As soon as I shift the white balance over, the picture looks about right. The picture will look naturally underexposed a bit, because the camera is trying to preserve highlight detail in the sky. Your subject is in shadow, so the camera is going to have difficulty preserving the sky detail and the foreground detail. In a case like this, you want to bump your exposure compensation up to overexpose the sky a little, but expose your foreground correctly. If you had your white balance set right, I see about an extra stop of exposure headroom that the camera would have given you to help avoid that noisy, grainy shadow noise.
Let me look at the manual for your camera for a second, and I’ll be back.
Take a photo in AUTO mode. NOT A. A is “Aperture Priority.” AUTO should override any futzed up settings. Take a picture of something that is evenly lit (either all in sun, or all in shade). How does it look?
Go to your Shooting Menu, and select the option White Balance. It’s set on a little lightbulb icon, isn’t it? Change it to AUTO for simplicity’s sake.
Just in case, press the little (+/-) buttong on the back of your camera, to the very lower right. Check that your exposure compensation is set to 0. It looks like the exposure compensation will be the bar in the lower right of your LCD screen that looks vaguely like this: -|,|,|,|,|+. Make sure it is centered. If it’s to the left, the camera is underexposing. The the right it overexposes. Press +/- again.
If picture 2009 march walk023.JPG is straight out-of-camera, my bet is either user error is to blame or the auto white balance has gotten screwy. Auto white balance error is a real possibility, as the pictures taken with flash don’t show the blue, according to the OP, and the camera would know to set the white balance to around 5500K when the flash is being activated–I don’t think it makes any “smart” decisions (analyzing color data in the picture) in the case of flash. In this case, the workaround is setting the white balance yourself.
To rephrase from my OP: The black and white pictures at the link I gave were taken on Auto, and the blue pictures were taken with altered aperture settings.
Without getting too technical, incandescent (tungsten) light is much more yellow than daylight. To compensate, the camera basically adds blue to the picture.
Let me have a look at the AUTO photos.
edit: I can’t tell anything with the AUTO photos, since it seems (according to the filename) that they’ve been edited. Do you have some completely straight-from-camera examples I could look at?
edit2: I opened up the wall photo, and the Sunday School sign photo, and they all are aperture priority photos. That, and the exposure on those looks fine.
The common sources of light - Incandescent, Daylight, Fluorescent - all have different color balances. Incandescent (Tungsten) is much “warmer.” If the camera thinks that you are under incandescent light, and you are actually in the sun, the photos are going to come out very blue.
