Hi!

I've just bought my first digital camera, a Sony Cybershot DCS-N1 (the one with the large LCD screen). I don't seem to be getting very sharp pictures with it, even though it is a decent camera with 8 mpixels and a good lense. Am I doing anything wrong? Picture quality decreases even further when copying the photos to my computer.

Don't tell me I have simply bought a rubbish camera -

settings, it may be set to low resolution. try going into the menu and change the setting to "fine" or similar (e.g highest resolution possible - 1234x5678))

Ours is the DSC-P52 and only 3.2 mega pixels and our piccies are really sharp, I can't see it being a cr@p camera TBH.

1. remove lense cap
2. smile
3. take wonderful digitally processed photograph
4. transfer, print, frame and mount

1. remove lense cap


That would definately help :thumbsup:

If you don't have a manual you can read one HERE (http://pdf.crse.com/manuals/2652805131.pdf).

You need to select "Image Size" and choose a higher setting. It goes up to 8Mb per picture and you will see that the number of pictures that you can take at that setting is fewer than other settings. If you only have a 64 Mb card you will only be able to take 8 pictures at the 8 Mb setting.

Bear in mind also that the camera needs a second or two to focus, so you need to hold it steady whilst if sorts itself out. If you're close to the subject, you'll need to select the correct setting (usually denoted by a flower symbol). The same applies to taking photos of something far away - choose the setting denoted by a couple of mountains

If you're taking a photo of 2 people, you need to point the camera at one person, push the button half way down, adjust your position, then take the shot, else the camera is trying to focus on some point in the centre of the shot that's half a mile away ;)

A few things come to mind. Firstly, as strix says, make sure it is focusing (and on the right thing!) before you take the picture... If in doubt, play around with a few pics and if you get a focus indicator, watch what it's doing. A lot of cameras have some way of showing you what it's focused on, eg my compact digital puts a little green box on the lcd screen, my slr superimposes a red dot in the viewfinder. It should bring that up and maybe do a little beep when it's ready to take. To get round any problems with foreground/background focusing, try some long distance landscapes then it can't pick the wrong subject!

Having said that, most cameras these days focus pretty well, so it makes me wonder if something else is going on. I'd also suspect that an 8MP camera should look pretty good even on the lowest possible quality setting! So other things I can think of are:

Are you stuck in macro (close-up) mode maybe? Some cameras can't focus too far away in this mode.

Are you viewing it on the computer in something that doesn't really scale pictures too well? It might be that resizing it to screen resolution makes them look better (although of course you're losing information and so shouldn't print from this version).

Is the camera doing any sharpening of the image? The default setting is to do this to a moderate level, but some cameras do more than others. I always turn this off and do it in software (look up unsharp mask if you don't know how). This can make a huge difference.

Lastly, you're not trying to take pictures where the light is bad enough to cause camera shake? Eg outdoors in bad light, or indoors with the flash turned off.

There's also always the possibility of unreasonable expectations... The more megapixels you have, the more likely it is that you'll suffer from lens or electronics problems - after all, 8MP is an awful lot of detail. But from what you've said, I doubt this is the problem. I don't understand though how the pictures can get worse transfering from the camera to the computer - how are you getting them there? Can you really tell they are less sharp than on a little lcd screen??

Hi Rich,

That's great advice, thank you!! I think I was indeed shooting longish distance on macro. Also, I took a few indoor photos at night, with no flash but with the lights on in the room. It's just that the flash gave a bit of a "dead" feel to the photos; without the flash they look quite atmospheric, although you lose on sharpness.

Thanks again!